The Rule of Democracy (1905-1914)

942.
082 Hl6r 68-10165

Halevy, Elie
The rule of democracy,
942.082 Hl6r 68-10165

Halevy, Elie
The rule of democracy,
1905-1914. $1.95
DAI ^ &. 1 "* 1"** *
v<
n k
"*
1
*
DUb.
S*""* "HP fT" tf""***
5,
A HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE
IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
THE RULE OF DEMOCRACY

(1905-1914)
The final volume of Haldvy s great history covers the turbulent

opening years of the twentieth century. The first part begins
by describing the downfall of the Unionists, who had linked
their fortunes with those of an aggressive imperialism, and the
advent of a new and more democratic Liberalism. It recounts
the events leading up to and arising from the Conference of
Algeciras and the Anglo-Russian Agreement, and the long
overdue reorganisation of the Army by Haldane and the Navy
by Fisher; and finally it examines the work of Winston Churchill
at the Board of Trade, and Lloyd George at the Exchequer,
proceeding thence to an analysis of the constitutional crisis that

culminated in the passing of the Parliament Act in 1911.
The second part is the prologue to the terrible human drama
that opened in August 1914. The theme is one of international
and domestic anarchy. The West was faced with the problems
of armed peace, the East with the principles of nationality.
At home, labour, women, and the Irish jostled for their separate
freedoms, and, while the rest of Europe watched the convulsions
of the Ottoman Empire, England and Germany girded them
selves for the unwanted but seemingly inevitable conflict. Before
them lay trial by fire and frightfulness. Without attempting
to interpret this crisis, Halvy concentrated on explaining the
intermediate period from 1905 to 1914 which, though not
the nineteenth century, may well be regarded as its epilogue.
A HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE
IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
I. ENGLAND IN I 8 I 5
II. THE LIBERAL AWAKENING (1815-1830)
III. THE TRIUMPH OF REFORM (1830-1841)
VICTORIAN YEARS (1841-1895)
IV.
V. IMPERIALISM AND THE RISE OF LABOUR (1895-1905)

VI. THE RULE OF DEMOCRACY (1905-1914)
TORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE
NINETEENTH CENTURY VI
THE RULE OF
DEMOCRACY
19051914
by
ELIE HALEVY
Translated from the French by
E. I. WATKIN
BARNES & NOBLE INC.

NEW YORK
First published in this edition 1961
Ernest Benn Limited 1961

Printed in Great Britain
Publisher s Note
This is the second edition of the book originally published
as A History of the English People in the Nineteenth Century,
Epilogue VoL H. The first edition was published as a single

book but was split in to two for the 1952 edition; Book I
containing Part I and the first two chapters of Part II and
Book II the third chapter of Part II and Part III. It is now
re-issued in one volume.
PITY (MO.) PUBLIC LIBRARY
MAY 151968 681O1G5

Introduction
new volume of my history, or, to speak more accur

ately, the second and concluding volume of the Epilogue
THISmy to history, requires no preface. Though six years have
passed since the publication of the previous volume I regard it as
the continuation of the former. Certain topics, for instance the
development of religious beliefs, I shall treat very briefly, justified
in so doing by the fact that I have already said in the previous
volume all that I have to say about them. On the other hand, as I
pointed out then, I reserved for the present volume the detailed
treatment of military and naval questions. I have kept my promise.
There is surely no need to explain why military and above all
naval problems assumed a special prominence at the opening of
the present century. During the years whose history I relate
England was hastening alike towards social democracy and
"towards war It was
.
hastening towards both with equal rapidity.
We must not be deceived by the noise of party strife. Apparently
the Unionists were the party of opposition to Socialism, the
Liberals the party prepared to make concessions to Socialism. In
reality both parties, stripped of their historic significance, were

yielding with a unanimity which was resigned rather than enthu
siastic to the pressure of the working masses. Apparently the
Unionists were the party of war, the Liberals the party of peace.
But when it was a question of voting the credits for which the
Admiralty asked, there was no distinction between the two parties.
Neither wantecNvar Both yielded inevitably to the pressure which
;
the increase in the German navy exerted upon the nation. We

shall be witnessing a drama whose denouement was predestined
from the outset.
For me the drama comes to an abrupt conclusion on the Fourth
of August 1914, when England declared war on Germany. I have
not attempted in a concluding section to interpret the crisis which
began that day not for England alone but for the entire world.
vn
INTRODUCTION
The which I have made to its understanding will be
contribution
my study of that intermediate period which though it is not the
nineteenth century constitutes its epilogue, and while not yet the
anxious and troubled century in which we are living to-day is its
immediate preparation. The task to which I am impatient to re
turn and to which I propose to devote the remainder of my
strength and my life will be the story of that great epoch during
which the British people cherished the splendid illusion that they
had discovered in a moderate liberty, and not for themselves
alone but for every nation that would have the wisdom to follow
their example, the secret of moral and of political stability.*
ELIE HALEVY
June 1932
My thanks are due to Mr. Graham Wallas, Brigadier-General Sir

George Aston, JFC.CJ3., Sir Maurice Amos and M. H. Le Masson, who
kindly consented to read particular portions of my proofs and thus gave
me the invaluable assistance of their
expert knowledge in the respective
provinces of public education, the organization of the army, the law of
1
marriage, and naval history.
*
Unfortunately Elie Hallvy never lived to complete his great task; he died in
1937- The last volume he wrote covered the years 1841-52, thus leaving a gap in
his history from the latter
year to 1895. This last volume, which first appeared
posthumously in 1948, is now published under the title of Victorian Years and
contains an essay by JR.. B. McCallum PUBLISHER.
bridging the missing years.
Contents
PAGE
Introduction vii
PART I
PROBLEMS OF LIBERAL POLICY
I IMPERIAL AND DOMESTIC PROBLEMS 3
Tariff and Imperial Questions; Domestic Questions: Ireland,

Education, Labour
II FOREIGN POLICY: THE ARMY AND NAVY 121

From the Conference of Algeciras to the Anglo-Russian Agree
ment; Haldane and Army Reorganization; Fisher and Navy
Reorganization
PART II
FOUR, YEARS OF CRISIS
I WINSTON CHURCHILL AND LLOYD

GEORGE 235
Churchill at the Board of Trade; Lloyd George at the
Exchequer
II THE CONSTITUTIONAL CRISIS AND THE

HOUSE OF LORDS 305
From the Dissolution of 1909 to the Death of Edward VII;
From the Death of Edward VII to the Passing of the Parliament
BUI; Lloyd George and the National Insurance Act
ix
PART II
FOUR YJEARS OF CRISIS

(continued)
III FROM THE BOSNIAN CRISIS TO THE CRISIS

OF AGADIR 369
The Austrian Annexation of Bosnia and the Naval Scare of
1909; Attempts at a Rapprochement between England and
Germany
PART III
ON THE BRINK OF THE CATASTROPHE
I DOMESTIC ANARCHY 441

The Syndicalist Revolt; The Feminist Revolt; The Irish
Revolt
II INTERNATIONAL ANARCHY 567

The West and the Problem of Armed Peace; The East and
the Principle of Nationality
Index 677
PART I
PROBLEMS OF LIBERAL POLICY

CHAPTER I
Imperial and Domestic Problems

I TARIFF AND IMPERIAL QUESTIONS
on December 4, 1905, Balfour tendered to King

Edward his own and his colleagues resignations, there
WHEN, was enacted in the political history of the British nation
a rapid drama in two acts. In the first the performers were the
handful of statesmen whose task it was to agree upon the compo
sition of the new Liberal Government, in the second the anony
mous mass of eight million voters invited in January to give that
Government their approval. We shall briefly sketch its episodes.
Balfour s
resignation had been undoubtedly determined by the
sudden campaign launched against him in November by Cham
berlain and his group of uncompromising protectionists. But why
had it been launched just at this particular moment? And why did
Balfour reply with such an air of eager haste by the resignation of
his Cabinet rather than by dissolving Parliament? Wemay well
suspect that recent events at Liberal headquarters were not without
their influence upon the actions of the Unionist leaders. Until
September, it had been the universal belief that the Liberal Premier
would be Lord Spencer, a veteran of the Gladstonian epoch, whose
titularsovereignty would give offence to nobody either among
the Gladstonians or the Liberal Imperialists. October 13, how
On
ever, congestion ofthe brain had incapacitated him for active work.
Who would take his place at the head of the party? Sir Henry
Campbell-Bannerman, the pro-Boer, or Lord Rosebery, author
of the watchword Liberal Imperialism and founder of the Liberal
League? Ever since October the question must have been fre
quently discussed by Unionist politicians, but when Chamberlain,
on November meeting of the Liberal Unionist Council
23, at a
called upon Balfour to give a clear pronouncement on the ques
tion of Tariff Reform, the quarrel between the two Liberal leaders
had already been reopened on another question.
On October 21, Haldane, addressing a public meeting at Edin
burgh, declared that the Irish policy of the future Liberal Cabinet
would be that of Sir Antony MacDonnell and Wyndham, repu-
IMPERIAL AND DOMESTIC PROBLEMS
months previously by the Unionist Cabinet. Four days
diated four
laterLord Rosebery employed almost identical language and into
the bargain explicitly rejected complete Home Rule. But Sir
Henry Campbell-Bannerman, however, in a speech at Stirling a
month later spoke in very different terms. He expressed his wish
to see the effective management of Irish affairs in the hands of a
representative Irish authority , that to say, he advocated Home

is
Rule, not mere devolution. It is true he advised the Irish to con

tent themselves as a beginning with a measure of more restricted
scope but only if this restricted concession was consistent and led
up to their larger policy , and he stated his conviction that before
long the question would receive its final solution. To this utter
ance Lord Rosebery decided to reply two days later by a formal
protest: Emphatically and explicitly, he asseverated, once and
for all, I cannot serve under that banner, and declared that on the
Irish question he agreed with Haldane. The other leaders of
Liberal imperialism Grey and Asquith could only reply, in
language which betrayed their embarrassment, that they saw no

opposition between Campbell-Bannerman s policy and Lord
Rosebery s, and that heated controversy about a question which
presented no practical urgency was gratuitous. Maintenance of
1
the parliamentary union between Great Britain and Ireland had

been the avowed platform on which the Liberal League had been
formed in the spring of 1902 in opposition to the old National
Liberal Federation. Since then the two groups had become recon
ciled in the defence of Free Trade. But Rosebery, who for two
years had lavished his energies and eloquence upon a series of

important orations on behalf of Free Trade, complained bitterly
that Campbell-Bannerman was depriving the Liberal party of the
benefit of their reconciliation by his persistence in inscribing Irish
Home Rule on his programme. Surely at a moment when the
issue of a return to protection had
placed all others in the shade this
resurrection of the Irish question was a welcome omen for the
Unionist election agents. And must we not conclude that the
spectacle of this dispute confirmed Balfour in his decision to resign
as soon as
possible that it might be seen whether his opponents
X
R. B. Haldane, speech at Edinburgh, October 21, 1905; Lord Rosebery,
speech at
Stourbridge, October 25, 1905; Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, speech at Stirling,
November 23, 1905; Lord Rosebery, speech at Bodmin, November 25, 1905 ; Sir Edward
Grey, speech at Newcastle-under-Lyme, November 27, 1905. Cf. Asquith, speech at
Wisbech, November 28, 1905.
TARIFF AND IMPERIAL QUESTIONS
would be able to compose their internal differences before the
General Election?
If this was Balfour s motive he was mistaken on a preliminary
point. Campbell-Bannerman s declaration on November 23 on
the question of Irish Home
Rule had been carefully discussed
beforehand not only with a representative of the Irish party, the
1
most moderate and most Anglicized of the group, but also with
the most important and at the same time the most moderate of the
Liberal imperialist section, namely Asquith. 2 Indeed, you had only
to read its terms carefully to see that CampbeU-Bannerman s
acceptance of the principle of Home Rule did not involve any

kind of undertaking to introduce a Home Rule Bill in the new
Parliament. It was Lord Rosebery, who, in his violent eagerness
to protest, had repudiated what would be the accepted programme
of the entire Liberal party save himself. But even now when he
had excluded himself by his deliberate choice from the Cabinet
about to be formed it is indeed possible that he had already in
formed the Liberal leader in October that he did not wish to be in
cluded the Tories did not lack grounds for reckoning upon
serious dissensions at Liberal headquarters. 3 It was on the morning
of Monday, December 4, that Baffour handed the King his resig
nation. The same evening Sir Edward Grey called on Sir Henry
and informed him that he would be unable to enter his Cabinet un
less Sir Henry were willing to quit the House of Commons for
the House of Lords. But Grey s haughty ultimatum did not take
the prospective Prime Minister by surprise. As early as November
3 we find him
Asquith s attention to the report that that
calling
ingenious person, Richard Burdon Haldane, proposed to dump
him on the Upper House. No one was better acquainted with the
rumour than Asquith, for it concerned a project he had himself
concocted in collaboration with Grey and Haldane and for which
they had secured King Edward s explicit approval. Banished to
the Lords, Campbell-Bannerman would be a figurehead Prime
1
T. P. O
Connor, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, 1908, pp. 72-5.
Sidney Lee, King Edward the Seventh: A Biography, 1925-7, vol. ii, p. 441.
3
Sir
8
For the formation of the Cabinet see J. A. Spender, The Life of the Right Hon. Sir Henry
Campbcll-Bannerman (1923), vol. ii, pp. 188-204; Margot Asquith, Autobiography (1920),
vol. ii, pp. 71 sqq; Richard Burdon Haldane, An Autobiography (1929), pp. 168 sqq.;
J, A. Spender and Cyril Asquith, Life of Herbert Henry Asquith,
Lord Oxford and Asquith
(1932), vol. i, pp. 169 sqq; Lord Morley (Recollections, 1917, vol. ii, pp. 140-3); Lord Grey
of Fallodon (Twenty-Five Years, 1892-1926, vol. i, pp. 62-3) and Sir Sidney Lee (King
Edward VII, vol. ii, pp. 441-5) are extremely sketchy. See further the interesting details
published in the Nation, June 4, 1921, by Gardiner.
Minister. The functions of party leadership would in fact be exer
cised by Asquith in the House of Commons. Sir Edward Grey
would be in charge of the Foreign Office. Haldane would be Lord
Chancellor, and not only would he preside in that capacity over
the House of Lords but his functions would be so extended that
in conjunction with the Premier he would exercise a control over
the general policy of the country. Behind this staff of imperialists
no one would notice a Prime Minister, by no means a marked
personality, who was opposed to the policy of force and national
prestige.
There were plausible arguments which could be presented to
Sir Henry to dissuade him from undertaking the double task of
Prime Minister and leader of the Lower House. Now seventy
years old, he had never been a hard worker and for several months
past his health had been seriously affected. He had just returned
from a long rest cure at Marienbad. King Edward, who had met
him there, advised him on Monday the 4th to spare his health,
remarking of them was a young man. But Sir Henry
that neither
stood firm. If his health made it necessary, he would accept a
peerage later, but he wished at any rate to open the session of 1906
not only as Prime Minister but as leader of the Commons. Weary
of argument he postponed his decision, since his health was the
objection put forward, until he could consult Lady Campbell-
Bannerman on her arrival from Scotland. If the imperialist mem
bers of the party counted on her womanly fears to urge her hus
band to leave the Commons, they were disappointed. She loathed
the clique and decided in favour of a firm front. Was the Tory
opposition to have at least the satisfaction of seeing Asquith, Grey,
and Haldane refuse to enter the Cabinet, since their terms had
been rejected? So The Times believed, and raised a paean of
triumph. But the very morning the article appeared, Friday,
December 8, the situation took another turn. Asquith had yielded
and accepted the office of Chancellor of the Exchequer without
the leadership of the Commons. Deserted
by him, could Sir
Edward Grey and Haldane carry on their strike? Grey seemed
persuaded him
inclined to that course, but the ingenious Haldane
to accept CampbeU-Bannerman as leader, if Sir
Henry would con
sent to give the
Foreign Office to Grey, the War Office to Hal
dane himself. Sir Henry willingly granted Haldane an office whose
importance he failed to realize. In the Foreign Office, on the other
hand, hewould have preferred anyone rather than Grey. But
when Lord Cromer, to whom he first offered it, refused on
grounds
of health, he felt
obliged to give way. Thus at the end of
the week the Liberal
imperialists had partially made good the
reverse they had
suffered at its beginning. They had not indeed
banished Campbell-Bannerman to the Lords, but in the Treasury,
the War Office, and the Foreign Office they held three offices of
the first importance. I remarked one day to a prominent member
of the group how easy it is to date the birth of a political associa
tion, how difficult to determinate the date of its demise; what
for example, had attended the formation of the Liberal
publicity,
League in 1902 and how mysteriously it had vanished later. But
the Liberal League he replied, did not vanish. What happened
,
is
simply that in 1905 it absorbed the Liberal Government. That
is why we went to war in 1914.
This serious difficulty once overcome nothing prevented the
formation of the Government. And formed it was on December
ii. It contained in all fifty-six members, of whom twenty were
in the Cabinet. The old Gladstonians were gratified by the
appointment of Sir Robert Reid as Lord Chancellor, with the
tide of Lord Loreburn, of Herbert Gladstone, the statesman s son,
to the Home Office, and of John Morley to the India Office.
Bryce, the eminent historian, who had entertained hopes of the

latter, found himself obliged to yield to Morley s claim and con
tent himself with the unenviable post of Chief Secretary for Ire
land. Lloyd George went to the Board of Trade. He had expected
a more important ministry, was indeed believed to have enter
tained hopes of immediate promotion to the Home Office. 1
Winston Churchill received the first reward of his desertion from
the Tories and became Under-Secretary for the Colonies (the
Secretaryship itself was given to a peer, Lord Elgin). Augustine

Birrell, a talented man of letters, went to the Board of Education.
To attract the sympathies of the working class the Local Govern
ment Board was given to John Burns, who, although he had not
accepted the programme of the Labour Representation Com-
1
Hugh Edwards, The Life of David Lloyd George, vol. iv, p. 60 Campbell-Banner-
J.
man gave him the option between the Post Office and the Board of Trade. He chose the
latter, which* though the salary was less, gave more scope to its His Welsh
occupant.
friends would seem to have dreamed of the creation in his favour of a special Secretaryship
for Wales analogous to the Secretaryship for Scotland. (J, Hugh Edwards, From Village
Green to Downing Street; The Life of the
Right Honourable Lloyd George, p. 139.)
D>
mittee, could claim to be a Socialist of long standing and was of

proletarian origin.
Thus the Liberals, though banished from office for over ten
years, had successfully solved as expert politicians all the problems
raised by the constitution of a Government. They had avoided a
split
between the Gladstonians and the imperialists. That Lord
Rosebery s name was absent from their list hardly mattered:
public opinion had become accustomed to regard this haughty
aristocrat as permanently retired. And though the opposition te-
fused to admit it, they had formed an administration far superior
in the individual worth of its members to that which had just
resigned. But although Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman was now
Prime Minister and leader of the Commons, the Unionist politi
cians cherished a forlorn hope. For the second act of the drama
had still to be played. Within a few weeks, the Liberals must con
front the electorate. They would emerge victorious. Of that there
was no doubt. But what would be the extent of their victory? It
must surely damage their cause to take the field under the com
mand of a prominent pro-Boer, whose sole recommendation to
the notice of the public was the fact that during the late war he
had made common cause with men notorious as enemies of their
country? Even in the Liberal camp it was regarded as dangerous
to speculate on the basis of the numerous by-elections won during
the past year. At a by-election voters freely allow themselves the
pleasure of giving the Government a slap in the face, because they

know their gesture can have no serious consequences. The utmost
that could be hoped for was a majority of a hundred over the
Unionists, just sufficient to prevent the eighty Irish Nationalists
from dictating their terms. And many Unionists expected a less
Chamberlain prophesied that the Liberal majority
decisive result.
would not exceed eighty, would be at the mercy of the Irish
members, and that the swing of the pendulum would not be long
1
delayed.
1 The
Autobiography of Mrs. Asquith, vol. ii, pp. 58-9, 80. For other forecasts see the
National Review, December 1905, vol. xlvi, p. 789, *The Liberal Letter ; An Intercepted
Letter (an imaginary letter from Campbell-Bannerman intercepted and sent to the
Review by the Fabian Society) The Central Office tells me that the Conservatives of all
:
shades cannot have more than 245 members to our 340, which gives us anyhow a clear
At period the elections were not completed in a single day.
this
They lasted a fortnight, and the order in which

they were held
ensured the Liberals from the outset an easy victory. After an
isolated election at Ipswich, where they a seat, ten Lanca
gained
shire constituencies were summoned on the following day,
January 13, to elect their representatives. In 1900 all had returned
Unionist members, Balfour at their head. Now all returned
Liberals or Labour men, 6 Liberals and 4 Labour. And these vic
torieswere the more sensational because in several instances the
had been faced not only with a Unionist oppo
successful Liberal
nent but with a Socialist as well. It was in vain that Balfour had
prevaricated, and the other Unionist candidates declared against a
tariff on foodstuffs all had been irremediably
compromised by
Chamberlain s was undoubtedly a misfortune for
propaganda. It
the Unionists that the first boroughs to vote were situated in the
holy land of Free Trade. But the same day in a number of other
manufacturing constituencies where the Tariff Reformers flat
tered themselves that their propaganda had been more successful,
the result was the same. The initial impulse once given, Liberal
victories followed in unbroken succession so long as the borough
elections continued. In London, which in 1900 had returned 8
Liberals as against 51 Unionists, 40 Liberals and Labour men were
returned, and only 19 Unionists. In the remaining boroughs of
England the respective positions of the two parties were almost
exactly reversed. In 1900 40 Liberal members had been returned
as
against 127 Unionists, now 124 Liberals as against 43

Unionists.
In Wales, the Unionists lost even the tiny minority returned at
the last election; all the n
representatives of the Welsh boroughs
majority, even on the rare occasions when Redmond can get over all his 85 to
vote against
us. And this majority of the whole House may be even as high as 70. Lord Hugh Cecil to
4
Mrs. Asquith, December 21, 1905: . .
guess is that your party will come back 230
,
My
giving you a majority of about 40 over us and the Irish together (The Autobiography of
Mrs, Asquith, vol. ii, p. 78). The Times January 13, 1906": 137 seats lately held by Unionists
will have to be captured by Sir Henry CampbeU-Bannerman s supporters to give him a
majority of 40 in the House of Commons over Unionists and Nationalists combined,
whereas the great revulsion of 1895, which transformed Lord R.osebcry s preponderance
of 31 into a majority for Lord Salisbury of 153, was accompanied by a reversal of the
previous verdict in 92 cases only. The Daily Mail of December 27 ventures the following
forecast: Conservatives and Unionists 247; Liberals 297; Labour (including Liberal-
Labour) 35; Nationalists 8 1. Cf. John Morley, speech at Forfar, January 10, 1906: This
General Election is the most exciting within my experience, and probably for nearly
sixty years, with the possible exception of that on Home Rule
in There are three
1880".
current predictions: (i) The Liberals, as in 1885, will be equal to the Tories and Nationalists
combined; (2) The Unionists will number only 200; (3) The Government will have a
majority of thirty or forty over the joint forces of the Tories and Nationalists/
were Liberals. In Scotland, the Liberals
reconquered the supre
macy they had appeared to be losing for some years past. Instead
of fifteen to sixteen, they were twenty-five to six.
On the ipth, when the borough elections were almost at an end,
the county elections began. If,
owing to the growth of the suburbs
of large towns or the development of mining, some of these con
stituencies had become urban and industrial, the
majority were
rural, and the Unionists might well hope by maintaining their
position here to mitigate the disaster which had befallen them in

the boroughs. But it soon became clear that even in these areas the
tide would
sweep away the last dykes behind which the old Con
servative party was entrenched. The
agricultural labourers from
dislike of the landlords and farmers, the farmers from dislike of
the Education Act which had made the rates heavier, and the
electors
generally disgusted with a Government of aristocrats and
dilettanti which had shown itself incompetent either to preserve
peace or make war and after the conclusion of peace had given no
proof that it had learnt the lessons of the war, voted for the
Liberals. The old County families who constituted the picturesque
element of the Unionist party saw themselves deserted
by those
whom until the dawn of the new century they had been pleased
to regard as attached to themselves
by a tie amounting to moral
serfdom. In Dorset a Bathurst was defeated, a
Kenyon in Derby
shire, a Lowther in Cumberland. Chaplin, for the last ten years
Minister for Agriculture and a Lincolnshire member for
thirty-
two years; lost his seat. The sole comfort left to the Unionists was
the fact that their defeat was not so as in the towns.
overwhelming
In England the counties returned 74 Liberals and 60 Unionists, in
Scotland 35 Liberals and 4 Unionists.; in Wales all the 19 members
were Liberals.
To sum up, the new House of Commons contained 430 Liberal
and Labour members, 157 Unionists, 83 Irish Nationalists. If from
the 50 working-class
representatives returned we subtract those
who, having accepted the nomination of the Labour Representa
tion Committee,
might claim to be regarded as a group apart,
there were 401 Liberals, 157 Unionists, 29 Labour members,
83
Nationalists. Any
lingering hopes Unionist headquarters may
have entertained on the eve of the
polls had been dissipated. The
Government majority was so vast that, even if the Liberals were
deserted by their Labour and Irish allies,
they could still of
dispose
10
130 more votes than the hostile combination. The only strong
holds remaining in Unionist hands were the wealthy districts of
London, a certain number of seats in the agricultural counties of
the South (Kent, Sussex, etc.), Bkmingham and its environs,
where Chamberlain reigned supreme, and Liverpool, where, no
doubt, the violent anti-Irish sentiment checked the Liberal ad
vance. To find a similar electoral landslide we must go back to the
General Election of 1833, which followed the passage of the first
Reform Bill, and it was indeed a revolution of the same kind
which was taking place at present. The paradoxical feature of the
situation was that die reforms of the franchise effected as long ago
as 1867 and 1884 had not borne fruit until now. Anti-Irish panics,
waves of imperialist enthusiasm, the failure of the old Gladstonian
party to understand the aspirations of the working masses,
had
kept the Conservatives in office. Their power was now a thing of
the past and many, who, after 1895, had been inclined to write the
Liberal party off as annihilated for the next half century, now re
garded 1906 as the year one of a new era, an era of Liberalism re

generate and democratic. In the new House there were only
six
teen bankers in place of fifty in the previous Parliament, and
1
twenty-one members of railway directorates as against fifty-three.
There were 310 new members, almost half the total membership.
And of these 310, 220 were Liberals, well-nigh three-quarters of
the party representation. Among these 220 were a large number of
young men, intellectuals, journalists, university professors, cham
pions of all those eccentric causes which arouse the enthusiasm
of
British philanthropy. They had stood for election or allowed
themselves to be put up simply in order that as far as possible the
Liberal vote might be taken in every constituency. theyNow
found themselves returned, often to their utter amazement. On
what platform? This is the question we must now examine. For
the new members felt, no doubt, some difficulty in analysing the
movement of vague enthusiasm which had landed them at
Westminster.
The programme on which the new majority had been returned

was undoubtedly first and foremost purely negative opposition
1
The Times, February I, 1906.
II
to tariff reform which the Liberals regarded as reactionary.
Chamberlain had intended to give the Election the character of a
referendum on the question, and the overwhelming majority
obtained by the opposite party seemed a hostile verdict upon his
a year to come there could be no
policy from which for many
appeal. But although a
number of long-established Conservative
the Con
organs in the provinces charged him with precipitating
servative defeat by his insubordination and intemperance, he
obviously retained the sympathy, secret or avowed, of the London

party press and the vast majority
of provincial Conservative
The Conservative defeat, his supporters maintained, was
papers.
due to the fact that Chamberlain had been compelled to play a
lone hand, while the old families with Balfour at their head mono
polized the official leadership of the party. The consequence
was
that the party had lost touch with the mass of the electorate. A
new organization and a new programme were indispensable.
Though he inspired this campaign, Chamberlain dared not claim
the leadership of the party. The established Conservative hierarchy
was too powerful. Relying, however, on the fact that of the hun
dred and fifty Unionists returned to the new Parliament, over a
hundred had been elected on the full programme of imperial pro
tection, he called upon Balfour to adopt it. On February 15 the
papers published two letters exchanged between the official

and
the unofficial Unionist leaders. In the first of these Balfour in
formed Chamberlain that he considered fiscal reform should be
the first constructive work of the Unionist Party demanded,
more equal terms of competition for British trade, and closer

commercial union with the Colonies and admitted that the im
,
position of a general tariff of a moderate character upon manu

factured articles and a light duty on imported cereals were not in
principle objectionable and should be adopted if shown to be
necessary for the attainment of the ends in view or for purposes of
revenue He was indeed careful to add that the new duties must
.
not be imposed for the purpose of raising prices or giving artifi

cial
protection against legitimate competition And he added that
.
to protect the British export trade and tighten the economic bonds
between the mother country and the Colonies may be possible
by other means and that it is inexpedient to permit differences
,
of opinion as to these methods to divide the party But these re

.
servations did not alter the fact that by placing tariff reform upon
12
TARIFF AND IMPERIAL QUJbb JUL/JLNO
the official programme of the party on the morrow of the debacle
at the polls, he had surrendered to Chamberlain. In any case,

it
was in this sense that Chamberlain interpreted Balfour s letter,
which, he said, he cordially welcomed*. The following day,

the two leaders was sealed
February 16, the reconciliation between
by a plenary assembly of the party at Lansdowne House.
Could it however be regarded as complete? Were its terms
unambiguous ? Balfour had no doubt accepted Chamberlain s pro
gramme in principle and that was great deal. But he had attached
a
to his acceptance so many reservations that their common enemies
were tempted to put to the test an alliance at the best of times
weak. On March 12 a member of the ministerialist majority in
the Commons invited the House to pass a resolution declaring
its
determination to resist any proposal whether by way of taxation

of protec
upon foreign goods, to create in this country a system
tion Balfour, thus driven to bay and compelled
.
either to defend
Chamberlain s entire programme or reject it categorically, evaded

the issue by a speech as ambiguous, complicated, and balfourian
as When he had finished, the Premier did not rise to
possible.
reply. When, however, Chamberlain interposed to charge him
with a breach of parliamentary etiquette, Campbell-Bannerman
decided to speak. His speech was brief and incisive. He denounced
Balfour s speech as futile, nonsensical, and misleading only jus
,
tifiable if his object had been to waste the time of the House I .
of this foolery. It might have answered very well in

say, enough
the last Parliament, but it is altogether out of place in this Parlia
ment. The tone and temper of this Parliament will not permit it.
Move your Amendments, and let us get to business. So these two
statesmen Balfour and Campbell-Bannerman faced each other
on the floor of the House, the former unanimously regarded as a
great artist, and a master of fence, the prince
of the House of
Commons, the latter an honourable man no doubt, but a bour
geois farfrom keen-witted and without prestige as a debater. And
it was the obtuse bourgeois, who, at the first passage of arms,
established his authority over the newly elected Parliament by
that he
informing his adversary amid the applause of his majority
considered him a sophist and refused to waste his time by listening
to him. There was indeed a third statesman to oppose Campbell-
Bannerman namely, Chamberlain himself whose imprudent
intervention had provoked the Prime Minister s withering reply.
Would he not very shortly give his party its revenge by employ
more direct methods better suited to a democratic audience?
ing
On this point we are reduced to conjecture, for in July he suddenly
from public life, a victim to the disease which made
disappeared
him a permanent invalid and a paralytic. But it is not likely that
his ardour would have succeeded, where Balfour s subtlety had
failed. The situation was too unfavourable to protectionist propa
ganda.
When the advocates of tariff reform opened their campaign in
1903, they had reckoned on a period of economic depression and
industrial stagnation. For after three or four years of prosperity,
the bad years before 1898 seemed to be returning. Their calcula
tion had been falsified by the event. The years 1904 and 1905 had
been prosperous. 1906 was better still. Imports rose from
.565,020,000 to .607,889,000, an increase of 7.6 per cent; ex
ports from 329,817,000 to an increase of 13 per
375>575>ooo>
cent. This double increase was not wholly an increase in the

amount of goods imported and exported. For there had been a
in which
general rise of prices. But there was one class of products
this rise had not taken place. Owing to an excellent harvest
throughout the entire world the price of cereals had fallen.

The
rise in wages therefore had not been balanced by a rise in the cost
of foodstuffs. Employers and workers alike with the solitary
exception of the landowners and their farmers were
satisfied.
The complaints of the tariff reformers found no echo in the

world of industry.
The sole resource left to the defeated Unionists was to scrutinize

every detail of the Government s policy, to surprise and exploit
some lapse, some concession voluntary or involuntary to their
ideas. Lloyd George, the new President of the Board of Trade,
twice presented them with an opportunity.
The first occasion was in 1906 when an important statute was
1 had
passed dealing with the mercantile marine. The shipowners
taken advantage of the protectionist movement which marked
the last years of the Unionist Government to bring forward two
X 6 Edw.
7, Cap. 48: An Act to amend the Merchant Shipping Acts 1894 to 1900
(Merchant Shipping Act, 1906).
14
distinct To examine them the Government had
grievances.
appointed two Committees of inquiry. 1 Both complained of the
increasing number of foreign seamen employed in the mercantile
marine. But a remedy was not easy to find. It was impossible to
dispense with these men, especially in tropical waters, and the
difficulty was all the greater because the non-British seamen, the
Lascars, were Indians and therefore British subjects. The first and
the more important of the Committees had recommended stricter
regulations to ensure the crews better conditions on board for
example, better sleeping accommodation and food, and so attract
a larger number of Englishmen to the service. This recommen
dation was very largely carried out by the Act of 1906. It had
further recommended the introduction of a rule by which sailors
in the merchant service must know sufficient English to under
stand orders in that language. On this point also the Act of 1906
carried out its recommendation. Actually, in the course of the
debates, an amendment more directly hostile to the foreigner was
inserted in the Statute. Pilots certificates would in future be
granted only to Englishmen. The shipowners had also complained

that since for the past twenty years they had been subject to
.
very strict regulations as to the amount of cargo and life-saving

apparatus, it was not just to allow foreign vessels not subject to
these regulations by their national laws to compete with theirs in
British ports. A second Committee was appointed to investigate
the question and, so far as existing international agreements per
mitted, its recommendations were incorporated into the Statute
of 1906. The Act subjected as far as possible foreign vessels entering
British ports to the regulations imposed on British vessels by
English law. Of these new provisions, some, as we have seen, were

obviously nationalist in character, the others, however justifiable
they might appear, abandoned the orthodoxy of free trade.
Foreign vessels were indeed permitted to compete with British,
but only if their competition was on an equal footing. This was all
the fair traders had asked for. They were quite ready to accept free
trade on equal terms.
In 1907, Lloyd George took a more decided step in the direction
1
Report of the Committees appointed by the Board of Trade to inquire into certain
questions affecting the Mercantile Marine, with minutes of evidence, appendices and index,
1902 (Lord St. Helier s Committee) Report from, the Select Committee on Foreign
Ships (Application of Statutory Powers) together with the Proceedings of the Committee
minutes of evidence and appendix, 1904 (Bonar Law s Committee).
VOL VI <*
15
of For some years the question of patents had been
fair trade.
causing anxiety to English manufacturers and the officials of the

Board of Trade. Too many foreign firms, especially American and
German, had taken out patents in England, often deliberately
drawn up in complicated and obscure language, to prevent British
industry using particular methods or machinery, or permitting
their use only on payment of a royalty. The extent of the evil can
be gauged from the fact that of 14,700 patents granted in 1906,
6,500 were granted to foreigners. A Committee had been appoin
ted in 1901 to examine the problem. 1 Its report led to the passing
of a Statute in I9O22 with the object of enabling an inventor, in
jured by a patent wilfully misdrafted, to obtain redress from the
courts. It proved inoperative. A Lancashire manufacturer brought
a test case. It cost him .4,000. To a poor inventor such costs were
3
prohibitive. The Patents and Designs Act of 1907 was a more
thoroughgoing measure. Not only was the procedure for modify
ing patents made simpler and therefore cheaper, but other provi
sions were laid down. In future the government would be entitled
to^cancel a patent, if within three years of the grant it had not been
used in the United Kingdom. All applications for a patent must
be accompanied by the production of specimens. And measures
were taken to put an end to the system of leases which tended to
subject British industry to foreign control. 1 am not afraid of
foreign competition , Lloyd George declared, as long as British
trade is free to fight it British industry shall be made perfectly
free to engage on equal terms in the severe struggle with its com
petitors/ The German Press raised the cry of protection. From

the opposition benches ironical congratulations were showered on
Lloyd George. Attention was drawn to the fact that the Bill of
1907 had been prepared and its clauses worked out by the Board
of Trade, before the advent of the Liberal Government, at the
1 Patent
Acts. Reports of the Committee appointed by the Board of Trade to
inquire
into the working of the Patents Acts on certain specified
questions, 1901.
a
Edw. 7, Cap. 34: An Act to amend the Law with reference to Application for Patents
and Compulsory Licences and other matters connected therewith (Patents Act, 1902).
3
7 Edw. 7, Cap. 28 : An Act to amend the Law relating to Patents and Designs (Amend
It was
ment) Act, 1907, repealed immediately and incorporated into a comprehensive
Statute which consolidated all former patent Acts. 7 Edw. 7, Cap. 29 An Act to consolidate
:
the enactments relating to Patents for Invention and the

Registration of Designs and certain
enactments relating to Trade Marks (Patents and Designs Act,
1907). For the spirit of the
new Act see Lloyd George s speech H. of C. March 19, 1907 (Parliamentary Debates, 9th
Series, vol. clxxi, pp. 683 sqq.) also
; his speech on the second reading of the Bill, H. of C.,
April 17, 1907 (ibid., vol. clxxii, pp. 1042 sqq.).
whose leaders at least shared
demand of a group of industries
the Unionists entitled to surmise
cSmberlain s views. Were not
that this young minister whom they
detested
as some actually did,
one day in the footsteps of that
so bitterlymight perhaps follow rm? Lloyd
the protagonist of tariff refo
other grelt demagogue,
more attached to demo
George was certainly no doctrinaire and,
to prove in these early days
free trade, was perhaps glad
cracy than to the old formulas
of the new Parliament that he was not enslaved
of Gladstonian orthodoxy.*
But this was a very slender foundation
One
would shortly join the protect!oms
s
for believing that he
take the
he had no political mducement to
thing was certain; was to
that it pohtics
step He shared his colleagues perception
to bear the for Chamber-
leave the Unionist party responsibility
of
Ss new programmewould
and to confront it with the alternative
leave them without a positive pro
disavowing it, which
it as their
Liberals-or frankly adopting
gramme to oppose to the
olatform and thereby courting defeat at the polls.
P Merchant Shipping or
must not, therefore, ascribe to the
We
to them by ^temporary
the Patent Acts the importance assigned
must on the contrary, draw We
Unionist speakers and journalists.
attention to the measures ostentatiously adopted
by the Govern
its predecessor on
the pa m
ment -to retrace the few steps taken by
and blundering tha. its
of protection, tentatives so misconceived
task was easy.
the
yielded by
The Budget of ! 9 o6 abandoned the ^2 000,000 of an
on coal imposed in 1901 which had the air
export duty But on what
inject concession to protectionist principles Authors had
be rationally defended? Its
grounds could the duty the res of
the necessity of preserving coal_m
argued from but ^rves
no means in
British soil to British industry by
indispensable after the
exhaustible. A Royal Commission, however, appomted
_--._. _ A..s*mi11tr ontinatrlfttlC
* tell us that Can
Trustworthy witnesses
to him (New Statesman, April 3, 19ô),
ju-.i/j^ George:
(Mr.Lloyd
\J.YJ.I.
o / v 1922.
*-*~, s ~- ABiography, - 9?;.
But t
.
j on
-. .
y
,
\j*J, a da
misunaerstanamg of
ûnderstanding
* **--
^ ^
ea a rcauuuujLA Wi
***
* Parlia-
* this
.1 **~. *..
.!__.*. . Uaav-vi
n-vniirn tn Tnft JUllDirC AS ij ^
ase<
f_ M f __, .
r?s;rffi^s~i : fc.jS ^ sts,r^s

imposition of the duty to undertake a comprehensive study of the

problems connected with the coal-mining industry in Great
Britain, had reached the conclusion that the supply of coal was in
no proximate danger of exhaustion. 1 There were a hundred thou
sand million tons of coal to be raised, and the annual output of
the mines in England, Wales and Scotland was
only two hundred
and thirty million. 2 It had been argued that British industry would
obtain its coal on better terms if export were rendered more diffi
cult. The
expectation, however, was not fulfilled at a time when
the price of coal was rising like all other prices, and the opposition
thus introduced between the interests of the manufacturing con
sumers and the miners sharpened the hostility of the huge mining
electorate to the duty of 1901. The
supporters of tariff reform
could only retort that if, as the opposition implicitly admitted,
the British producer suffered from the imposition of this
export
duty, it would be the foreign producer, not the British consumer,
who would suffer from the imposition of duties on imports. 3 This
logic-chopping represented the entire opposition of Unionist
speakers during the debates on the Budget. The theorists of free
trade, the miners, and the powerful group constituted by the
merchant service were united in opposition to the export duty
on coal. In fact, the opposition was a mere formality: Austen
Chamberlain, Chancellor of the Exchequer in the late Cabinet,
had already promised to abolish it. 4
In 1907 a more important step was taken in the same direction.
On June 6, Sir Edward Grey, in his capacity as Foreign Secretary,
informed the permanent international Sugar Commission that the
British Government could no longer continue to participate in the
1
A Royal Commission appointed to inquire into the extent and available resources of
the coalfields of the United Kingdom; the rate of exhaustion which may be anticipated,
having regard to possible economies in use by the substitution of other fuel, or the adoption
of other kinds of power; the effect of our exports of coal on the home and the time
supply,
for which that supply, especially of the more valuable kinds of coal, will
probably be
available to British consumers, including the Royal
Navy, at a cost which would not be
detrimental to the general welfare; the possibility of a reduction in that cost, by
cheaper
transport, or by the avoidance of unnecessary waste in working through the adoption of
better methods and improved appliances, or through a in the customary terms and
change
provisions of mineral leases, and whether the mining industry of this country, under
existing conditions, is maintaining its
competitive power with the coalfields of other
countries, 1900. First Report, 1903; Second Report, 1904; Final Report, 1905.
1
Final Report, p. 6.
8
H. of C. April 30, 1906, Joseph Chamberlain s speech
(Parliamentary Debates, 4th Series,
vol. xlv, pp. 560-1).
4
H, of C., April 30, 1906, Fenwick s speech (Parliamentary Debates, 4th Scries, vol. xlv,
P- 327)- Joseph Chamberlain s
speech (ibid., iv, pp. 459~<5o).
18
Union under the conditions imposed by the Brussels agreement,
since the agreement was inconsistent with their declared policy,
and incompatible with die interests of British consumers and sugar-
using manufacturers and claimed for Great Britain freedom from
,
the obligation to subject sugar which had received a bounty to the

retaliatory duties it prescribed. On July 25, the Commission met
at Brussels and in two days drew up the draft of an agreement
supplementing the convention of 1902, which was ratified on

August 28 by the adhesion of all the contracting powers. It sus
pended the international union for five years from September i,
1908, and freed Great Britain during that period from the obliga
tion to penalize sugar in receipt of a bounty, the other contracting
powers merely reserving the right to require that any sugar refined
in theUnited Kingdom and exported to their territory should be
accompanied by a guarantee that no portion of it came from a
country which accorded a bounty for the growth or treatment of
sugar.
The Tariff Reformers protested, and their protests were similar
to those they had made against the abolition of the export duty
on coal. They amounted to no more than the argument that the
Brussels convention had not produced all the ill-effects foretold
by the Free Traders. The quantity of raw sugar imported, far
from decreasing, had increased by 15 per cent. The export of
confectionery had increased and had never before reached so high
a figure. The plantations of cane sugar in the West Indies had
been saved, which however did not prevent some manufacturers
from making preparations to introduce the sugar beet industry
into England. Unionist speakers further taunted the measure
with being a compromise. If the Government wished to keep its
election promises, why was there not a complete rupture with
1
the international Commission?
Nothing came of their protests. The Liberals had promised the

electorate cheap sugar, and the pledge was fulfilled by the
Brussels compromise. The Convention of 1902 was not calculated
to win the British voter to the cause of tariff reform. For the only
British producer it protected was not English or Scottish but the
West Indian plsgiter. The object of the Unionist Cabinet in
colonies from ruin,
signing it had been, by saving the West Indian
X
H. of C., July 30, 1907 (Parliamentary Debates, 4th Series, vol. clxxix, pp. 799 sqq.),
H. of C,, August I, 1907 (ibid., vol. clxxix, pp. 1240 sqq.).
TO
to inculcate- in the British public the belief in a solidarity of
interests between the mother country and her Colonies. The
problem of free trade was thus bound up with that of imperial
unity. Chamberlain s revived protectionism was not and was not
intended to be a parochial protection of the interests of the mother
country alone; it aimed at an imperial protection, the protection
of Greater Britain as a whole against the outside world. From this
point of view Chamberlain had bequeathed to the new Govern
ment a legacy of singular difficulty. It was all very well for the
majority of the new ministers to proclaim their opposition to
imperialism; they could not escape responsibility for the settle
ment of imperial problems. Their anti-imperialism signified at
most their unwillingness to increase a burden of responsibility,
already overwhelming, by further conquests, and their belief in
the desirability of applying more liberal methods in ruling the
hosts of nationsand races subject to the British Crown and thus
perhaps consolidating the Empire by liberalizing it.
In April, 1907, after an interval of five years, the Colonial

Conference met in London. 1 The Liberal Government did nothing
to diminish the solemnity of the proceedings. Campbell-Banner-
man was at pains to lay to rest any suspicions of an intransigent
Englandism, to which his attitude during the Boer War
Little
might have given rise. He invited the Prime Ministers of the Self-
Governing Colonies to his official residence in Downing Street
and made the reception as imposing as he could. A special table
was put up which had the shape of an E to symbolize the Empire
by its very form. Above the Premier s head a likeness of Pitt lit
by a projector presided over the meeting. By an innovation which
did not pass unremarked, he did not leave it to the Colonial
Secretary to open the proceedings, but made the opening speech
himself, a profession of faith at once imperialist and Liberal. No
1 For the
preparations for the Conference and its work, see Colonial Conference, 1907;
Despatch from the Secretary of State for the Colonies, with enclosures respecting the
Agenda of the Colonial Conference, 1907 (1907); Correspondence relating to the Colonial
Conference 1907 in continuance of (1907) Published Proceedings and Precis of the
;
Colonial Conference I5th to 26th April, 1907 (1907); Minutes and Proceedings of the
Colonial Conference, 1907. See further Richard Jebb, The Imperial Conference: A History
and a Study, 1911, vol. ii, pp. 68 sqq.
20
question,
he said, must be excluded from discussion, and the fact
that the British Government might on one point or another find
itself in disagreement with a particular Colony would not
weaken the bonds of friendship which united them. Paying an
who had sought to cement the
ironical tribute to the statesman
bond of imperial unity by commercializing it, he quoted the
words in which Chamberlain had spoken of the sentimental
character of the tie which bound the mother country to her
Colonies. In fact, the question of granting or refusing a prefer
ence to the Colonies was the most important of those discussed
at the Conference.
The Commonwealth, New Zealand, and Cape
Australian
Colony, whose Government was at the moment in the hands of

imperialists of British origin, put forward resolutions advocating
a system of mutual preferential tariffs between the various Self-
Governing Colonies and the United Kingdom. The Prime Minis

ter of the Commonwealth was a vehement supporter of Cham
berlain s
project. Alone the Canadian premier, Sir Wilfred
Laurier, held aloof. Like his party, the Liberal party of Canada, he
was committed to a fiscal policy entirely independent of the rest of
the Empire, and reciprocity not with Britain but the United
States. What arguments did the other
1
premiers bring forward? It
was no longer possible, as it had been possible three or four years
earlier, to argue that since the growth of commerce was more
rapid between the mother country and her Colonies than between
the mother country and the rest of the world, a system of preferen
tial tariffs followed the natural line of historical
development.
Unfortunately for that argument the statistics for the past year
yielded diametrically opposite results. But this did not prevent

Chamberlain supporters from making use of them. England,
s
they argued, sent too much capital and too many immigrants to
the United States, not enough to Canada and the other parts of
the Empire. If, however, by an artificial system of protection
1
For the Canadian tariff of 1907 sanctioned by the Ottawa Parliament on the very eve
of the Conference see Edward Porritt, Sixty Years of Protection in Canada, iS46-1907:
Where Industry Leans on the Politician, 1908, pp. 421 sqq. (written from the free-trade stand
point). For the negotiations for a treaty of reciprocity which the Canadian Government
proceeded to open with the Government of the United States and which the intransigence
of Congress rendered abortive, see H. A. L. Fisher, James Bryce (Viscount Bryce ofDechmont,
O.M.), vol. ii, pjp. sqq. See also Edward Porritt, The Revolt in Canada against the New
<52
Feudalism; Tariff History from the Revision of 1907 to the Uprising of the West in i910, 1911
(well documented but resembling too closely a pamphlet in favour of free trade).
commerce could be diverted into colonial channels, capital and
human labour would follow in the same direction; from every
standpoint therefore they would be assisting the progress of the
1
Empire.
The hopes of these Self-Governing Colonies were damped by
the opposition of three ministers. Asquith, speaking as Chancellor
of the Exchequer, made the pronouncement in favour of the
official free-trade
orthodoxy which might have been expected
from him. He refused to inquire whether Cobden had regarded
British free trade as the prelude to universal. If he remained loyal
to free trade it was because he believed it was demanded by the
special and immediate interests of the British people. Lloyd

George disappointed any hopes which his Merchant Shipping and
Patent Bills might have aroused by defending the principle of
freetrade in terms as uncompromising as Asquith s. Since
Winston Churchill was only Under-Secretary for the Colonies he
might have kept silence. As a convert from Toryism, however,
and, like all converts, suspect in both camps, he thought it
necessary to state his position and put forward political arguments

in favour of the complete fiscal
independence of the mother
country in regard to her Colonies. We
have already had occasion
to appreciate their gravity. Sentiments of
deep affection united
the different parts of the Empire and, if the mother country
attempted to dictate to a Colony, or conversely, if a Colony

attempted to dictate to her, the fiscal system to be adopted,
everlasting conflicts of interest would result. The effect would
be to weaken, not, as was consolidate
hoped, imperial
sentiment.
At moment a number of disputes brought home the
that very
danger of attempting to give a systematic form to a union which

continued somehow to function in total disorganization. Asquith
and Lloyd George declared their intention, to do everything in
their power to foster commerce between the different
parts of the
Empire. This, however, was not always an easy task, and the
obstacles did not arise exclusively fjrpm the attitude of the mother
1
Four-fifths of the capital which had built up the industries and the railways of the
United States had gone from the City of London. When he thought of that, and that
Canada had hardly been able to get the money to build a single line of railway across her
continent, he regretted that they had not forty or fifty years ago awakened from the
lethargy from which he was glad to say that they had now awakened* (Sir F. Borden:
speech delivered at a banquet given by the Eighty Club to the Colonial Prime Ministers
April 16, 1907).
22
that
country It was because of the Australian Government
in almost
Imperial Penny Postage, already operation throughout
extend to It was
the whole of the Empire, did not yet Australia^
to advertise loudly the ot an All-
all very well for Canada project
via Montreal and
Red Route between England and Australia ot
for this
Vancouver. Australia showed no
enthusiasm piece
in London a totally different
imperialism but put forward
a line of rapid communications be
scheme, the organization of
would not touch Canada
tween Australia and England which
an open conflict had existed
Moreover, for more than ten years
the Self-Governing Colonies
between the mother country and
and the coasting
about the laws controlling merchant shipping
to
trade. In 1894, when the Liberals
were in office they had dared
home rule, and the Parliament ot
violate the principle of colonial 8
Bill which, while
Great Britain had a Merchant Shipping
passed
colonial legislatures full powers
to prescnbe
it conferred on the
the twofold reservation
the conditions of coasting trade, imposed
must place British vessels on an equal
that anysuch legislation
footing with colonial, and
must not conflict with any right granted
treaties to foreign states.
But the constitution granted
by British
the Australian Parliament un
six years later to Australia gave
limited jurisdiction in this sphere.*
This at least was die interpreta
the Common
tion placed upon the Act in Australia. Accordingly,
whose were
wealth Parliament passed in 1904 a
Statute provisions
Act of 1894. And in 1903, New
in conflict with those of theBritish
the restrictions laid down in the Act ot 1894
Zealand overrode
to justify her action by an
without even troubling like Australia
constitution. In London, a Commission
5
appeal to the text of her
into the Australian Statute and
in particular
appointed to inquire
the Commonwealth
to determine how far it was
authorized by
the examination of the question to a man-
Act of 1900 referred
^M^rf^fV^ iJî^
^^ja^^^K^&^^
ICclonialConference
***
i(
^ 7, 8 ,
mmt pay its way
s Enactments relating to Merchant
to consmu* the Commonwealth of Australia
(Commonwealth of
Australia ComtituhonAct),
For the Australian Acts see
^^9? ;
Australia, New Zealand, Correspondence
relating to
M
merman
,,,,
23
time conference 1 which began its sessions a few days before the
Colonial Conference met. It failed to reach a settlement arid left
England at grips with serious difficulties at two opposite extremi
ties of her
Empire. In Newfoundland the United States refused to
recognize certain provisions of the local mercantile code, and the
Foreign Office, siding as always with the United States against
British colonists, ordered the cruisers stationed in those waters to
protect American vessels against agents of the Newfoundland

Government if the latter attempted to enforce its legislation on the
Americans. 2 And
Australia actually introduced a Bill during the
following summer which not only excluded from the coasting

trade all non-Australian vessels, including British, but interpreted
coasting trade so widely that it seemed as though the deliberate

object of the measure were to aim a deadly blow at British
merchant shipping. 3 Should the British Government, to maintain
the imperial order, quarrel with the United States and Australia?
British diplomacy, both within and without the Empire, once
1
Colonial Merchant Shipping Conference, 1907. Report of a Conference between Repre
sentatives of the United Kingdom, the Commonwealth of Australia and New Zealand on the
subject of Merchant Shipping Legislation, 1907 It is worth remark that the issue raised by
this dispute between the mother country and her dominions was quite different from the
issue between England and foreign powers on this same question of merchant shipping. As
Sir Joseph Ward pointed out (Colonial Merchant Shipping Conference, 1907, Report p. 2) the
mercantile legislation of New Zealand was in advance of the British and could not there
fore be abandoned under pressure from the mother country. On the same page Lloyd
George himself pays tribute to this legislation and remarks on the borrowings from it in the
British Statute of 1906: This country is old and moves much more slowly than her
younger and sprightlier children across the seas and reforms proceed with much slower
pace here than they do in all colonies. I dare say many of us regret that, and look with
longing eyes to the legislation which you have been able to achieve in the Colonies with
out much difficulty.
2
For this episode see the extremely indignant speech of the Newfoundland Premier,
Sir Robert Bond, West India Club, June 5, 1907. At the conference the matter was dis
cussed with such acerbity that the speeches were omitted from the official report. The
dispute between the British and American Governments respecting the Newfoundland
fisheries was finally submitted to the court of arbitration at The Hague, whose decision
was on the whole favourable to the British thesis (Annual Register, 1910, pp. 458-9).
3
The Australian Merchant Shipping Bill formed part of an entire programme, semi-
protectionist and semi-socialist, adopted by Deakin s Liberal Cabinet which depended on
a Liberal-Labour coalition. Of this programme our Bill was an item. To the Australian
ship-owners it offered the monopoly of the coasting trade in Australian waters, to the
exclusion in particular of British vessels coming from India and manned by Lascars; to the
crews of merchantmen it offered extremely advantageous conditions of employment
which would cost the owners dear. The programme also comprised what was termed the
New-Protection: protective duties were imposed but the manufacturer who profited by
them was obliged to raise his employees* wages in proportion. On this last point the High
Court decided that the measure was unconstitutional as exceeding the powers of the
Federal Parliament. The decision led to the fall of the Liberal Government and in the
political confusion of the following months the Merchant Shipping Bill was lost sight of
(Economist, October 13, 1907, May 23, June 13, 1908; The Times, October 30, 1908;
Economist, December 5, 1908).
24
more employed its favourite methods, discussion, compromise,
delay.
On the fundamental issue of preferential tariffs the offers came

.from the Colonies, the opposition from the mother country. But
the former were not unanimous, and even those which offered
Britain a preference became suddenly hostile to any kind of
preferential treatment where the regulation of merchant shipping

was concerned. As regards the military organization of the Empire
the proposals for unification came from London, and Campbell-
Bannerman left the matter to his imperialist Secretary for War,
Haldane* The opposition came from the Colonies, who were
opposed both to a supreme imperial command and the permanent
representation of the Colonies on the Committee of Imperial
Defence. They were content to request that the Colonies might
avail themselves of the Committee s
expert advice on questions
affecting their local interests and in such cases send a representative
to participate in its discussions. As regards the political organiza
tion of the Empire the late Unionist Colonial Secretary, Lyttelton,
had submitted to the Colonial Governments a proposal that the
1
Colonial Conference* should be transformed into an Imperial

7
Council ,
on which their representatives would have permanent
1
seats. The suggestion attracted the Australian Premier, Deakin,
but he was faced by the opposition not only of the new Liberal
Government but of the Canadian Prime Minister, Sir Wilfred
Laurier. It was finally decided to retain the Conference . In
future, however, it should be termed Imperial* instead of
Colonial the Prime Minister, not the Colonial Secretary, should
;
be its President; and

should meet regularly every four years,
it
though, Conferences might be summoned in

if necessary, special
the interval In default of a council Deakin proposed a permanent
secretariat of which the Prime Minister should be President. His
proposal was defeated, but a secretariat for the Self-Governing

Colonies was formed, at the head of which the Colonial Secretary
was placed. All these measures could be interpreted in two senses.
They might be regarded as steps towards a federation of the
1
Colonial Conference. Correspondence relating to the future organization of Colonial
Conferences, pp. 3-4.
25
Empire. But they might equally well be regarded as tending by

the constitution of the new secretariat to detach from the rest of
the Empire the Self-Governing Colonies, the Dominions, or
Self-Governing Dominions as they were officially entitled for
the time in ipoy. 1 And the fact that the president of future
first
Conferences would be the Premier might be taken to imply that

they were nothing more than conversations between the Prime
Ministers of nations completely independent of each other. If the
Dominions chose to draw the federal bond tighter, so much the
better. If they decided to loosen it, the parting could be effected on
friendly terms. In 1907, breaking for the first time with the
1
The Colonies were first mentioned in the official title of the sovereign in the royal
proclamation issued in 1858 annulling the Charter of the East India Company in the name
*
of the Queen of Great Britain and Ireland, Canada, South Africa, Australia and all the
Colonies/ When, however, inl876 Disraeli obtained from Parliament for the Queen the
new title of Empress of India*, opposition speakers (Gladstone amongst them) urged in
vain that mention should be made of the Colonies. Disraeli rejected the proposal as
implying that the Colonies did not form an integral part of the United Kingdom. The
word Dominion was used for the first time in 1867 when the British Government
decided to give it to the new federation of the British Colonies of North America. Lord
Carnarvon explained that the tide was adopted because of the sentiments of patriotic
loyalty to the Crown which it implied, a designation which is a graceful tribute on the
part of the colonists to the monarchical principle under which they have lived and
prospered and which they trust to transmit unimpaired to their children (H. of L.,
February 19, 1867; Parliamentary Debates, 3rd Series, vol. clxxxv, pp. 567-8). When it was
decided in 1901 to introduce into the style of the new sovereign Edward VII a mention
of the British Colonies Chamberlain originally proposed to add to the words King of
Great Britain and Ireland the words and of Greater Britain beyond the Seas The .
Canadian Government rejected the suggested formula and proposed *King (or Sovereign)
of Canada, Australasia, South Africa, and of all the British Dominions beyond the seas or ,
alternatively not to give offence to the Colonies not specifically mentioned the shorter
*
form of all the British Dominions about the seas . The latter formula secured the appro
bation of Natal, the Cape, Newfoundland, and New Zealand, and Chamberlain accepted
it (Colonies Correspondence related to the proposed Alteration of theRoyal Style and Titles of
the Crown, 1901). It was finally adopted by Parliament without
opposition in the House of
Commons, after a variation proposed by Lord Rosebery of all the Britains beyond the
seas had been rejected (H. of L., July 26, 1901; Parl. Deb., 4th Ser., vol. xcviii,
p. 1 88);
see also H. of C., August 12, 1901; Parl. Deb., 4th Ser., vol. xcix, pp. 457
sqq. The plural
term Dominions now designated all the Colonies, the Crown Colonies as well as the
Self-Governing. When the text of the resolution defining the future composition of the
Conference was laid before the Conference of 1907 the Prime Minister of New Zealand
protested against the term Self-Governing Colonies which it contained and proposed
the title States of the Empire*. The phrase, however, was unintelligible in Australia, where
the States were the provinces of the Commonwealth. The term "Dominions was adopted,
and in the text finally approved by the Conference they were termed Self-Governing
Dominions to distinguish them from the Crown Colonies included among the
Dominions in the royal tide (Colonial Conference, 1907. Published Proceedings and Principles*
of the Colonial Conference, i$th to the z6th April, 1907, p. 16 Minutes of the Proceedings of
the pp. 79 sqq.). Strictly speaking, only Canada was a Dominion. Australia was a
Commonwealth. The South African Colonies were not united. New Zealand was only a
Colony but immediately after the Conference successfully claimed the title Dominion
(speech from the Throne, Wellington, June ax, 1907), and in September the entire country
triumphantly celebrated Dominion Day.
26
established tradition, the Foreign Office permitted negotiations
between Canada and France for a commercial treaty to be con
ducted at Paris, not by the British Ambassador, but the Canadian
Premier, whose decisions were simply registered by a repre
of the Foreign Office. 1 The solution of the question in
sentative
whatever direction it might lie was left to the future. For the
moment they discussed, compromised, postponed.
In this way, by adopting an attitude which combined generosity

with caution, the Liberal Cabinet managed to emerge from the
Conference with prestige unimpaired. But the problem of the
relations to be established between the mother country and the
Dominions was perhaps the least of those with which British
imperialism was faced. Far more serious were those raised by the
direct government of the different parts of the Empire. And
nowhere were they more complicated than in South Africa,
which had just played such a prominent part in English history.
It was a
compendium in which all the difficulties of imperial
politics
were summed up.
British South Africa contained between five and six million
inhabitants, four or five million of whom were black five or six
black men for every white. 2 Among the blacks the Hottentots,
1
For the change of attitude in this respect between the Liberal Cabinet of 1895 and the
Liberal Cabinet of 1907 see Colonies (Negotiations of Treaties with Foreign Powers) Return
to an address of the Honourable House of Commons, dflted i3 April, 1910 , for Return of the
Correspondence between His Majesty s Governments of the self-governing Dominions and

Colonies respecting the constitutional position of the latter in the negotiation of commercial and
other Treaties with Foreign Powers, including the letter from His Majesty s Secretary of State
for Foreign Affairs dated Foreign Office London, 4th July, 1907 addressed to the British Ambas
sador at Paris and laid upon the Table of the Canadian House of Commons, 1910.
a
According to Colonel Seely s calculation there were in South Africa between four and
five million natives (H. of C., August 16, 1909. Parliamentary Debates, Commons 1909, 5th
Series, vol. be, p. 953). KeirHardie, in the course of the same debate, estimated the propor
tion of natives to whites as six to one (ibid., p. 988). These estimates can be no more than
approximate. According to the census of 1904 there were 1,825,172 coloured persons to
580,380 whites in Cape Colony: 945,498 natives and 23,891 other persons of colour to
299,327 whites in the Transvaal; 84,541 natives and 55 other persons of colour to 898
whites in Swaziland; 241,626 coloured persons to 43,419 whites in the Orange River
Colony; 79,978 natives in the employment of whites, and 6,686 half-castes or others to
97,189 whites in Natal in addition to 100,918 Indians counted separately, In Southern
Rhodesia only the whites were included in the census. The reader can judge how difficult,
in view of the diversity of methods employed, it is to determine more accurately than I
have done the numerical proportion of the black population to the white. And these
figures take no account of the great protectorates composed practically speaking wholly
whose culture was of a lower order, were declining in numbers
and being swamped by the invasion of the Kaffirs from the north,
a race morally and physically superior. The
problem was further
host of coloured people, who
complicated by a mulattos, the
regarded themselves as closer to the whites than their native
ancestors. Originally, all the blacks had lived, and the
majority
still lived, under the tribal
system. The individual was without
rights, the chief of the tribe absolute master of persons and pro
perty, custom an even more despotic ruler, imposing its supreme
command on the chief and his subjects alike. The men fought and
spent the rest of their time in idleness, the women provided for
their wants by
cultivating the soil. But this indigenous system was
now subject to the solvent action of new social forces. The liberal
legislation of western Europe had given the blacks in the old Cape
Colony equal civil rights with the white men. If they could prove
that they possessed the
requisite property qualification they were
entitled to vote on the same
footing as British or Dutch whites.
And the Government furnished their children with a generous
supply of schools. Where the old tribes survived steps had been
taken to facilitate the transition from collective to private
property. Elsewhere, the whites had pursued a different policy,
protecting the tribal system against the corrosive forces to which
was exposed, segregating the blacks and
jrefusing them access
it
to European civilization. This method itself could be applied in

different ways. In Natal, for instance, racial
equality was pro
claimed by the constitution, but the officials entrusted with its
execution took care to render the
principle nugatory. In the
former Boer republics of the Orange River and the Transvaal
the law sanctioned the
subjection of the blacks. In the protec
torates of Bechuanaland, Swaziland, and Basutoland, on the
contrary, the sole object of an administration at once despotic and

paternal was to maintain the tribal system intact and safeguard it
against every encroachment of civilization. Almost everywhere,
however, the new forces were tending to individualize the
blacks. Mass production, and such were the methods now used in
of blacks. In the Christian Commonwealth of
February 22, 1906, we find the following
statisticsfor Natal whose source is not
given: Whites 82,542; blacks 877,388. Amold-
Forster (H. of C., March 29, 1906;
Parliamentary Debates, 4th Scries, vol. cHv, p. 1650)
also estimates the whites at 82,000, the blacks however at
956,000. For the native question
in South Africa there is an
important official document of this date: South Africa: Report
of the South African Native Affairs Commission 1903-5, 1905; Natal: Report of the Native
Affairs Commission 1906-7, 1908.
28
gold mining, brought it well within this category withdrew the

black man for a time from his kraal to return him to it with money
of his own, eager to acquire land and assert his independence.
These conditions gave birth to a revolutionary agitation and the
Ethiopian movement, which for the first time in Africa organized
blacks the native Christians against the whites with a pro
gramme of national claims.
On the very morrow of the General Election of 1906 a serious
native revolt broke out in Natal. The blacks refused to pay a poll
tax imposed by the local Parliament. But it was stated that the
Ethiopian propaganda played a part in the insurrection. It was
repressed by the provincial Government without assistance from
the imperial army. A small local force of 5,000 put it down in a
campaign which continued from February until July and cost

the natives 3,000 lives. The summary condemnation to death of
twelve rebels as a preliminary to the suppression of the revolt
outraged humanitarian sentiment in England and faced the
Cabinet with a problem which on many occasions already during
the past century had embarrassed British Liberals. Was the inde
pendence of the Colony, in other words of the colonists, to be

scrupulously respected? Or were they to protect the freedom of
the natives even against the colonists? At first the Government
decided in favour of the second course and ordered the execution
of the condemned men to be postponed until the Colonial Office
had established the justice and legality of their sentence. But it
was now the turn of colonial public opinion to rise in revolt.
Protests poured in from the Cape, from Australia, and from New
Zealand. The Government of Natal resigned. Then the British
Government yielded and sanctioned the executions.
In point of time this was the first outstanding episode in the
colonial policy of the new ministry. It was humiliating, and the
Unionist opposition at Westminster raised paeans of triumph. But
it was in fact
important only inasmuch as it called attention, per
haps for the first time, to the gravity of the problem of the black
races in South Africa. For the moment it was another racial
question which clamoured urgently for solution. For the blacks

were not the only lower race whose presence in South Africa
made difficulties for the British Government. During the last
few centuries the white peoples have systematically manipulated
and transported, as it served their interests, a large variety of races.
29
They have negro America whose slave labour

called into being a
was a fertile whose emancipation has raised
source of wealth but
grave problems for which the United States has found no other
solution than the paradoxical return to a system which in some
of its moral aspects resembles the Indian caste system. In South
Africa, as though to continue this circulation of races around the
globe, the Anglo-Saxons invited an invasion of Asiatics in
constantly increasing numbers. We
have already spoken of the
problem created by the importation of Chinese labour into the
Rand gold mines and the important place it occupied in the mind
of the British public on the eve of the General Election. The
invasion of coolies aroused the hostility of the workers in the
Transvaal, who objected to the competition of this cheap Asiatic
labour. And the British workers sympathized with their grievance.
On the Rand round Johannesburg a group had been formed
which entitled itself the Labour party, the first item on whose
programme was the expulsion of die Chinese. The Chinese
labour also gave offence to many Boer peasants instinctively
hostile to strangers and who, moreover, had good reason to be
alarmed for the security of their property and persons. For these
workers from the East were too often the refuse of Chinese crime
whom the Government had cleared from its gaols. Too frequently
they escaped from the compounds where they were segregated,
plundered farms, and murdered isolated Boers. The British
humanitarians made common cause with these two classes of
objector. It is a state of affairs tainted with slavery, Campbell-
Bannerman declared in one of his election speeches, and he had
barely become Prime Minister, indeed his Government had not
yet received the ratification of die popular vote, when he an
nounced that he had given instructions to stop forthwith the
recruitment and embarcation of coolies in China and their
1
importation into South Africa .
But at the very moment when he gave this pledge he found

himself faced with the fact that in November licences had been
granted for the importation into the Transvaal of more than
fifteen thousand Chinese. How could they be cancelled retro
spectively? The lawyers pronounced unanimously that it was

impossible. The Liberal ministers were therefore compelled on
first
taking office to assist passively at a new invasion of yellow
1
Speech at the Albert Hall, December ai, 1905.
so
TARIFF AND IMPERIAL QUJBSTiUJNi
labour, and make a public declaration that the settlement of the

question would be postponed until the Transvaal had been pro
vided with a responsible government. It was a humiliating admis
sion of impotence at a moment when the Election campaign was
in full swing, and when the employment of Chinese labourers in
the mines was the topic with which radical speakers found it
easiest to excite the indignation of the masses against the Tory
candidate. Nevertheless, for a whole year the British Government
could do nothing more than co-operate in repatriating individuals
with a number of capitalists who had adopted an independent line
of action and make preparations to replace Chinese labour even
tually by a combination of white and black labour locally re
cruited. Then, in the spring of 1907, in the lobbies of the Imperial
Conference the enemies of yellow labour at last won the day.
General Botha, the Prime Minister of the Transvaal, was strug
gling with pecuniary difficulties which placed his Government at
the mercy of the Rand magnates. He secured from the British
Cabinet the guarantee of a Transvaal loan of .5,000,000. He was
therefore free to gratify the wishes both of the Boer peasants and
the mining proletariat by ordering the repatriation when their
contracts expired of the Chinese workers actually employed. The
question was thus settled without involving the mines in the

catastrophe predicted by Lord Milner s friends and the Rand
capitalists.
It must be added that the Chinese were not the only Asiatics
whose presence in South Africa gave anxiety to the local and the
imperial governments. The Hindus had traded along the entire
east coast of Africa long before the first Europeans made their
appearance. At present they were established in large numbers

not only in Natal, where the annual number of Hindu immigrants
was estimated to exceed that of the British, but even in the interior
of the continent at Johannesburg, where they made a living as
petty traders and artisans. The whites, however, took
alarm and
began to pass legislation subjecting the Asiatics to a special code,
*
as though they were an inferior caste The Hindus replied by
.
revolt. Mohandas Karamchad Gandhi, a devout Hindu ascetic,

who, however, had studied law in London and practised at the
South African bar, where he defended his compatriots interests
1
in the courts, had begun his/ormidable career as an agitator. He
1
V. D. V. Athalye, The Life of Mahatma Gandhi* 1923.
31
revolted first when lie saw his fellow countrymen deprived of the
suffrage and subjected to condemning them to

special legislation
a life of semi-slavery. For a time he enjoyed the support of the
was at this
High Commissioner, Lord Milner. For the Transvaal
time the scene of his activities, and Milner welcomed a further
Gandhi had therefore
pretext to oppose the aged Kruger. through
out the Boer War displayed the most ardent loyalty to the British
cause, hoping presumably to win for the Hindus
the favour of
Great Britain after the victory. But, if such had been his hope, he
was speedily undeceived. The Hindus in South Africa were ex

severe and new legal restric
posed to an ostracism increasingly
tions were imposed upon them. In 1906 Gandhi inaugurated a
novel method of resistance, not active insurrection but passive
resistance, silent and inactive refusal to obey any of the regulations
1
laid down by the law.
The Hindu agitation in South Africa

was destined five or six
years later to assume formidable proportions. And it would prove
the prelude to an even more serious agitation in British India, for
which reason deserved mention. For the moment, however,
it
one question in South Africa dominated all the rest another

racial problem. How
were the English and the Boers to be recon
ciled a few years after the war which had raged between them? In
conformity with the promises embodied in the treaty of Vereenig-

ing the Government had already begun in 1905 to bestow
on the
Transvaal a measure of political liberty. A
preliminary constitu
tion had been granted by letters patent of March 31, two days
before the departure of Lord Milner, who had resigned on March
2, Lord Selborne leaving the Admiralty to take his place. How
are we to explain the change at this particular moment? Can we
avoid the conclusion that Milner, while proclaiming the grant of a
constitution to which, moreover, we are told, he gave a general
assent , did not altogether approve it in detail and preferred to
2
leave to a successor the difficulties its introduction would involve?
1
Conflicts between Anglo-Saxons and Indians were not confined to the African coast of
the Indian Ocean. In Canada in 1907 anti-Japanese riots were complicated by anti-Indian
disturbances. For the Vancouver disturbances see The Times, September 12, 13, 14, 1907.
2
Notice the ill-humour with which Milner announced the reform of April 5, 1901,
while admitting it to be inevitable, in his speeches at Germiston, March 15, 1905, and
32
One thing at least is was a godsend to the
certain: his resignation
Liberal Government, which thus escaped the necessity of dismiss
ing a few months later an orthodox disciple of Chamberlain.
Lord Selborne was no doubt a very conservative statesman, but a
man of moderate temper with whom Campbell-Bannerman
could get on well. In the December of 1905 the need to take a
further step in the Transvaal was urgent. For the constitution of
1905 had completely failed to satisfy the Boer population. A
legislative council of forty members, of whom
the majority were
elected this
: at first sight seemed a considerable concession. But
the franchise was based on a property qualification determined
in such a wayas to give the vote to a far larger number in the
towns than in the country districts, to the benefit of the British
element and the detriment of the Boer. Moreover, the powers of
this council were limited. The British Government had the right
to disavow within two years any law it might pass, and the initia
tion of financial measures was strictly reserved to the governor. 1
A formidable agitation against the measure was organized by
General Botha. He announced that he and his friends would enter
the legislative council only to make any regular work impossible
by their obstruction. He demanded not only for the Transvaal
but also for the Orange River Colony the immediate establish
ment of a system of unrestricted democratic self-government with
a responsible cabinet. The Liberals had barely entered office when
they decided that the constitution of 1905 should not be put into
operation and despatched a Commission to South Africa to con
duct a rapid inquiry and report before the summer. By July 3 1
the Government was able to lay before both Houses the main
lines of the constitution, definitely granted to the Transvaal by
2
letterspatent of December 6.
The suffrage was for all practical purposes universal. The con
stituencies were arranged in such a way that no one could claim
that old traditions were outraged, for the former boundaries were
Johannesburg, March 31, 1905 (Transvaal, Further Correspondence relating to affairs in

Transvaal and Orange River Colony , ,
1905, pp. 1 88 sqq,). Sec, however, W. Basil
.
Worsfold, The Reconstruction of the New Colonies under Lord Milner, 1913, vol. ii, pp.
259 sqq., who maintains that the entire text of the constitution had Lord Milner s approval.
If this is the case it was the mere fact of granting representative government to the Trans
vaal which aroused his antipathy.
1
Transvaal, Despatch transmitting letters patent and order in council providing for constitutional
changes in the Transvaal. April 1905.
2
Transvaal Transvaal Constitution, 1906. Letters patent and instructions relating to the
Transvaal and Swaziland Orders in Council December 1906.
33
respected. And though the English would possess a slight majority

in the new assembly it was only because they possessed it in the
population. In the debates thetwo languages were to be on an
absolutely equal footing, whereas under the provisions of the
constitution of 1905 Dutch would merely have been tolerated. A
second chamber nominated by the Executive was reluctantly set
up and the Government was at pains to defend it. It was indeed
an arrangement of which nobody is
particularly
enamoured .
But the Colonies possessed such a chamber, and this second

all
chamber, avowedly moreover of a temporary nature, might serve

as a useful check in the interest of the Kaffirs on the native policy of
the popular assembly. The two speeches in which on the same day
1
Lord Elgin in the Lords, Churchill in the Commons, explained
the intentions of the Cabinet, met with violent protests from the
opposition. But the Unionist Press was
more reserved and when
in December the matter came once more before Parliament the
protestof the opposition in both Houses seems to have been
2
merely formal.
During this same December the Government promised to ex
tend self-governmentto the Orange River Colony. The follow
ing June it carried out its pledge. It was an even bolder experiment,
for in this case the population was homogeneous and completely
Dutch. But in the Transvaal itself, to the great disappointment of
the British Government, the Boers secured the majority of seats.
This did not necessarily mean that were die majority of
the Boers
the population. But
proved it had
to the hilt that the Pro-Boers
been right in condemning a war undertaken in the interest not of
the British inhabitants but the mineowners. For an entire section
of the British population, particularly among the working class,
rejecting the progressive party which
entitled itself the English
party and was manipulated by the mineowners, voted for the can
didates of Het Volk, the Boer nationalist party. In this way it
came about that General* Botha, a general of the Boer army,
represented his country at the meetings of
the Imperial Confer
ence. He received from the Secretary for War the honours British
pourtesy owed to the valour with which he had fought England

on the battlefield.
1
July 31, 1906 (Parliamentary Debates, 4th Series, vol. cbtii, pp. 611 sqq., 729 sqq.).
*H. of L., December 17, 1906 (Parliamentary Debates, 4th Series, vol. clxvii, pp. 939
sqq.)i H. of C, December 17, 1906 (ibid., pp. 1063 sqq.).
34
10
The problem remained to be solved the union of all

great
From the economic standpoint
these free states into a single state.
it was intolerable that customs and railroad charges should form
a perpetual source of conflicts between them, suspended from time
to time by laborious and precarious agreements. From the politi
cal standpoint it was absurd that a white man should acquire or
lose the right to vote by changing his domicile from one state to
another, or black men be
subject to a different system. Circum
stances were particularly favourable for settling the problem. The
imperialists of Milner s school favoured

a federation of South
Africa, as the first stage to the federation of the entire Empire. It
was to make it possible that they had engineered the forcible des
truction of the two independent republics. It was in fact the group
of Lord Milner s former subordinates in South Africa, headed by
the youthful Lionel Curtis, who undertook a serious examination
of the question and drew up the important memorandum com
municated by Lord Selborne to the home Government in
1
January ipoy. The British Liberals on their part wished to prove
that their methods, not those employed by Chamberlain and his
disciples, provided the true solution of imperial problems and that,

by granting a system of complete political independence to the
Transvaal and Orange River, they were taking the quickest road
to reconcile the two races throughout the whole of South Africa.
If Milner had not left Africa, if there had been no General Election
in 1906, would Lionel Curtis and his friends have carried out their
task with the same freedom? And the Boers expected the unifi
cation of South Africa to compensate them for the -treaty of
Vereeniging by establishing their predominance by peaceful and
legal means throughout the entire country. For the Orange River
Colony was wholly theirs, in the Transvaal they disposed of the
majority of seats, and if Dr. Jameson, the hero of the raid, was
Prime Minister at Cape Town, it was an accident due to the disen-
franchisement of so many rebels. The amnesty had supervened,
once more they would be masters, an expectation actually verified
in 1908.
*-The Selborne Memorandum: A review of the Mutual Relations of the British South
African Colonies in 1907. With an Introduction by Basil Williams, 1925.
35
The task of framing the constitution of the future British South
Africa was entrusted to a national convention of representatives
of the various South African Governments which sat from Octo
ber 1908 to February 1909, and whose labours resulted in the
Statute by which the Imperial Parliament granted the constitution
of September ipop. 1 No general solution of the native problem
could be found and for that reason the different systems of fran
chise obtaining in the various states, henceforth provinces of the
Union, were Where
the blacks already possessed the
left intact.
franchise (as in Cape Colony) they continued to possess it for the

elections to the new federal Parliament, and the constitution even
laid it down that they could be deprived of it only by a majority
of two But they were ineligible for membership of the
-thirds.
Union Parliament, and the utmost the home Government could
wring from the Boer representatives was the nomination by the
Governor-General of a limited number of senators on the ground
of their special knowledge of the needs and wishes of the
coloured people, an extraordinarily indirect form of representa
tion. All the economic difficulties on the other hand were over
come by it exceeded Milner s
a political unity so complete that
federal idealand eventually enabled the Boers to override all
2
opposition by English Natal. The capital was the Cape; the
Supreme Court sat at Bloemfontein and the executive depart
ments were established at Pretoria in the Transvaal. The Statute
was passed without amendment in an almost empty house, 3 at a
moment indeed when the attention alike of the nation and of
Parliament was absorbed by questions nearer home and exciting
7, Cap. 9 An Act to consolidate the Union of South Africa (South Africa Act,
1
9 Edw. :
1909) For the Union of South Africa and the work of preparation see R. H. Brand. The
Union of South Africa 1909 also an excellent chapter in Sir John A. R. Marriott, The
Mechanism of the Modern State: A
Treatise of the Science and Art of Government, 1927, vol. i,
pp. 257 sqq.

2
Lord de Villiers, president of the National Convention, visited Canada in 1908 and
found that too much autonomy had been left to the provinces. In Quebec he wrote, the
,
result has been to establish a distinctly French province without any prospect of its being
ever merged into a Canadian as distinguished from a purely French nation (Eric A.
Walker, Lord Villiers and his Time: South Africa, 1842-1914, 1925, p. 434). At first sight it
may seem strange to find a Boer so unsympathetic to the successful efforts of the French
Canadians to preserve their independence. The reason is that he was thinking of the
similar efforts the English in Natal might make to retain their independence against the
Dutch majority. It was a curious fact that in both instances the British Government
adopted the constitutional arrangement (federation in Canada, unification in South
Africa) most unfavourable to the British element.
3
H. of C., August 16, 1909, Arthur Balfour s speech: The House is a thin one and a
weary one* (Parliamentary Debates, Commons 1909, 5th Series, vol. ix, p. 1000).
36
more directly. Nevertheless, this easy acceptance
political passions
of the South African constitution eighteen months after Camp-
beU-Bannerman s death was a triumph for that Gladstonian
liberalism of which he had been the convinced exponent.
ii
In Northern Africa, Egypt 1 from the juridical standpoint formed

no part of the Empire, and Egyptian affairs, therefore, came within
the competence not of the Colonial but the Foreign Secretary.
For Egypt was simply occupied by a British army and the British
Consul-General at Cairo possessed only the influence the presence
of the army of occupation conferred upon him. This, however,
was very great and the Consul-General was, in fact, the Imperial
Governor of the country. A legislative
council which met every
month and of whose thirty members only fourteen were nomi
nated by the Government, the remainder elected at second-hand
on the of a franchise practically universal, had the right to
basis
criticizebut not to reject or amend the bills submitted to it by a
cabinet entirely subject to British influence. A General Assembly,
composed, in addition to the thirty councillors and six ministers,

of forty-six elected notables of whom eleven represented the
towns, thirty-five the country districts, had the right to refuse its
assent to
any^new tax. But the Khedive s government, subject for
twenty years to Lord Cromer s beneficent supremacy, had never
found itself obliged to ask the assembly for new sources of revenue.
The Budget always showed a surplus, and the country enjoyed a
prosperity unknown until the arrival of the English. The Soudan
was completely pacified, and by the agreement of April 1904
France had finally recognized England s privileged position in
Egypt. When, therefore, the Liberals took office at the end of 1905
they had no reason to expect trouble from this quarter. keen A
supporter of the Anglo-French agreement, Lord Cromer was
certainly convinced at this period that, free at last from the con-
1 For
the condition of Egypt under British control see Lord Cromcr s excellent annual
reports. Egypt: Reports by His Majesty s Agent and Consul General
on thefinances, administra
tion and condition of Egypt and the Soudan in . . . See also, for the period immediately
preceding that with which we are dealing, Alfred Milner (Lord Milner), England in
Egypt 1892 . nth Ed. with additions, summarizing the course of events to the year 1904, 1904.
. .
See also The Earl of Cromer, Modern Egypt, 2 vols., 1908.
37
stant difficulties caused by the opposition of the French Colony
with the more or less open support of the Quai d Orsay, he
could pursue without further obstacle the complete anglicization
of Egypt. But suddenly a native agitation sprang into existence
more embarrassing and possibly more dangerous than the French
obstruction had been. In one aspect it was a nationalist movement.
A powerful group belonging to the elite of the native population
doctors, men of business, barristers, journalists argued that
since the British Government claimed that the object of its occu
pation of Egypt was to bring that country the benefits of western

civilization, it should not stop half-way but grant Egypt those par
liamentary institutions of which the legislative assembly was a

mere shadow but which", it would seem, constituted the pith and
marrow of European civilization. In another aspect it was a panis-
lamic movement, not confined to Egypt, but active along the en
tire northern coast of Africa. As such it appealed to the lower
strata of the population, untouched by western influences. The
panislamic agitators, their eyes fixed on the Sultan, preached a

revolt of all Moslems against the oppression of the colonizing
powers and their culture.

In the opening months of 1906 the relations between the Anglo-
Egyptian Government and Turkey were disturbed by a serious
diplomatic incident. It concerned the frontier between the Turkish
and Egyptian territory in the region of Sinai. The Turkish Govern
ment sought to extend its jurisdiction to the east coast of the
peninsula.The British Government not only contested this claim
but maintained that the territory tinder its control extended to
the Mediterranean coast, to a point east of El-Arish. France and
Russia supported Britain at Constantinople. The admiral in com
mand of the Mediterranean fleet informed the Porte that he had
made arrangements to land a force in the most important
all
islands of the Archipelago. In Egypt, the army of occupation was

reinforced. Finally, on May 14, the Sultan, faced with an ultima
tum, submitted. It was a diplomatic and military incident belong
ing to the foreign relations of the United Kingdom rather than
to the administration of the
Empire. If it concerns us here, it is on
account of its strange repercussion on the domestic situation in
Egypt. Reading the contemporary British press we receive the
impression that the British Government was defending the inter
ests and
rights of Egypt to the east of the Suez Canal. But in Cairc
38
and Alexandria the episode by no means appeared in that light.
Itwas regarded as a reinforcement of British control over Egyptian
foreign policy, a machination to embroil the Egyptian with the
Turkish Moslems. In the Soudan an Arab rising had to be sup
pressed by bloodshed, and Lord Cromer recognized that the
troops hastily summoned from Malta to Cairo would be better
employed in keeping order on the spot than in making war on
Turkey. They were exposed to the hostility of native mobs. On
June 13 at Denshawai, near Tanta, in the Delta, five officers,
attempted to shoot pigeons without first obtaining permission
from the inhabitants. Their imprudence provoked a riot in which
one of them was mortally wounded.
Fifty-two arrests were made and after a summary trial twenty-
one of the accused were condemned, four of them to death. The
death sentences were immediately carried out. But would Lord
Cromer be content with repressing the disorders by force? Aware
of the increasing gravity of the insurrection against British rule,
he must surely perceive that concessions were inevitable. He
categorically refused to admit this: the utmost he was prepared
to concede was that it was* desirable, though difficult, to give the
natives a larger share in the administration, and he appointed
Zaglul Pasha Minister of Education- He also admitted in principle

the possibility of convoking the provincial councils more fre
quently, and increasing the number of their members, possibly

even to some very shght extent their jurisdiction. But he would
.take no step in the direction of transforming the legislative council
into an Egyptian Parliament. 1 Such a Parliament would be un
workable. It would soon be superseded by a despotism of die
oriental type which would destroy all the fruits of the twenty
years of British administration and whose first victims would be

the blue shirted fellahs Lord Cromer would not allow that he
.
was himself a despot for he was subject to the control of the

Foreign Office and the British Parliament, where Radical opinion
was always on the alert to denounce abuses in the administration
of the Colonies, and was liable to the censure of the Egyptian
press, against which he refrained from invoking the protection of
1
Egypt No. 3 (1907). Despatch from the Earl of Cromer respecting proposals of the Egyptian
General Assembly,
May 8, 15)07. See, a year later, the scheme for reforming the provincial
councils worked out by the new Consul-General, Sir Eldon Gorst, in conformity with
his predecessor s Cf. Lord Cromer s reflections in 1908 in his
suggestions (pp. 3, 4).
Modern Egypt, vol. ii, pp. 275-6,
39
new laws. 1 In any case the grant of a constitution worthy of the
name could not be contemplated until an indispensable preli
minary reform had been effected the abolition of the system of
capitulations and mixed tribunals which enabled criminals to
escape the clutches of the law if they could claim foreign nation
ality, and made a host of administrative
acts dependent on the
consent of seventeen governments. He suggested the establish
ment of a council composed exclusively of Europeans to draw up
the laws governing the relations between Datives and foreigners.
He suggested at the same time a reform of the mixed tribunals.
Their composition, while remaining international, would no
longer be exempt from the control of the imperial government,
and they would apply a code which the government with the
assent of the legislative council could alter from time to time as
local needs might require. 2 But this reform would itself be ex
tremely difficult, requiring as it did the assent of seventeen states.

In any case, it was not Lord Cromer s task to carry it through. At
the opening of 1907 he resigned on grounds of health. Ten years
earlier his departure would have been a
triumph, in 1907 it
appeared almost a flight. To be sure, his successor, Sir Eldon Gorst,
the son of Sir John, declared his intention not to depart from the
line of action followed by his predecessor. But did he believe
what he said? Confronted with the problems of the new Egypt
could he succeed where a greater than he had abandoned the
field?
12
Keir Hardie, the leader of the Labour party, declared in July

1906 that the terrible event which happened in the Soudan the
other day, with its attendant brutalities, reduced the administra
tion of that country under British rule to the level of that of the
Congo Free State and he could not think of the massacre of the
,
natives in South Africa without shame and horror 3 Were we to .
witness a revolt of British humanitarianism against the excesses of
1
Report ... on the finances, administration and condition of Egypt . . . in 19Q5, p. 12.
2
The question had been already raised in the report for 1904. For the detailed plan of
reform Lord Cromer had in view, see his report for 1906, pp. 10 sqq.
3
Letter to a black domiciled in England: Daily News, July 5, 1906 Keir Hardie s
reference to the Soudan betrays an obvious confusion in his mind between the repression
of the Soudanese rebellion and the executions which followed the Denshawai incident.
.40
British imperialism? What actually happened was the diversion
of humanitarian indignation into another channel. It turned
against the atrocities of a foreign imperialism, atrocities whose
theatre was that state of the Congo to which Keir Hardie alluded.
In 1884 at the Berlin Conference the great Powers having agreed
to renounce for themselves the annexation of the Congo basin
had decided to set up in those regions an independent State whose
administration was entrusted to the King of the Belgians. He had
governed the Congo as his private property with the greed of a
very astute man of business. And he had delegated the adminis
tration of entire districts to companies who, to compel the natives
to cultivate the rubber forests, had employed the most brutal
methods, not even shrinking from massacre. British humanitarian
sentiment was outraged and found vent in an outburst of indig
nation when in 1902 at the close of the Boer War liberalism once
more prevailed over the imperialism popular during the preceding
years.
The agent of an important Liverpool shipping company,
Edmund Morel, resigned his post to devote himself entirely, with
the financial support of the Liverpool mercantile magnates, to a
campaign of propaganda against the abuses in the government of

die Congo. He denounced as violations of freedom and humanity,
down by the Berlin Confer
violations also of the conditions laid
ence, the exactions to which the natives were subjected and the
closure of markets to European commerce by the monopolies
1
granted to the companies. He won the support of the political
groups and the churches; in fact, British public opinion was
solidly at his back. The King of the Belgians, against whom the
campaign was primarily directed, decided to shelter himself by
transferring the responsibility for the government of the Congo
to the Belgian Parliament. Morel and his friends were willing that
the British Government should approve the transfer, but only
provided no reservations were made with the aim and effect of
2
perpetuating all the abuses he denounced. The struggle would
1
E. D. Morel, The Congo Slave State; A Protest against the new African Slavery; and an
to the Public of Great Britain, of the United States, and of the continent of Europe,
Appeal
1903; Red Rubber, The Story of the Rubber Slave Trade flourishing on the Congo in the year
of grace 19Q6, 1906; Great Britain and the Congo The Pillage of me Congo Basin, 1909. For
1
.
the author s biography seeE. Seymour Cocks, E. D. Morel: The Man and His Work, 1920.
*
E. D. Morel, The Future of the Congo: An Analysis and Criticism of the Belgian Govern
ment s proposals for a reform of the condition of affairs in the Congo, submitted to His Majesty s
Government on behalf of the Congo Reform Association; with Appendices.
41
continue for several years. Success was at last in sight when at th
end of 1909 Leopold s death raised to the throne of Belgium King
Albert, more humane than his uncle and less of a man of business.
But it was not until 1913 that the militant philanthropists of
Liverpool obtained complete satisfaction
on the two points in dis
pute: protectionof the natives against the exploitation of which
they were the victims ;
freedom of trade by the abolition of the
monopolies.
This campaign of aggressive humanitarianism aroused little
sympathy on the Continent. When the British Government called
upon the other signatories of the Berlin convention to support its
demands France and Germany England found support
refused.
only in Washington, the other capital of the English-speaking

world. 1 In Paris and Berlin, as at Brussels, it was pointed out that
Morel, far from being a martyr to the cause he espoused so zea
lived very well, and moreover that his
lously, lived by it and
financial backers were merchants, not apostles. Lord Cromer was
loud in his denunciations of the disgraceful administration of the
Congo. Was it to cover Denshawai? Or was it perhaps because
he wished England to regain possession of the Lado enclave on
the Upper Nile which she had too generously abandoned to the
King ofthe Belgians? Lord Lansdowne on behalf of the Unionist
to intervene on the
party had called upon the British Government
Congo between the negroes and the whites. Why had his attitude
been so different when in Natal the white men were of British
race? But when all this is granted, it remains true that the abuses
denounced by the Congo Reform Association were hideous facts,
that when Morel called upon the Belgian (and also the French)
Government to abolish in their Colonies the privileges granted
to private companies, he was only asking them to follow the
example England had lately given in her own, and that England
was not pursuing any secret design of conquest but simply
claiming equal freedom of trade in the Belgian Congo for her
own subjects and the entire world. Moreover, if his campaign
directly served the interests of some exceedingly influential
groups of business men, in other respects it ran counter to the
policy pursued by Great Britain. At a moment when the Foreign
Office in its fear of Germany was working hard to conciliate all
1
Where E. D. Morel succeeded in securing Mark Twain s collaboration. King Leopold s
Soliloquy; A Satire, 1907.
42
e European powers, his denunciations had aroused the indigna-
)n of the Belgian public against British hypocrisy and arrogance,
id though Sir Edward Grey did his best to sweeten the
pill by
.e courteous language in which he couched his Government s
>mands, he could not prevent
Belgian foreign policy from re
taining consistently pro-German until the eve of the Great War.
13
But why at this particular moment did this problem of the

overnment of the native races suddenly assume such importance
t the two extremities of Africa? What was the
underlying cause
f the Ethiopianism and the Panislamism which in South
tid North Africa alike caused such embarrassment to British
nperialism? We might be tempted at first sight to see in the

>henomenon ofJanuary
a reaction to the British General Election
906. If British imperialism had begun to mistrust itself, what

vonder if the subject peoples began to doubt the solidity of the
idifice? But we cannot believe that the Election played such an
mportant part in the history of our planet. We should rather, we

hink, regard this African agitation as the offshoot of a general
nsurrection of the non-European races against western domina-
ion. The movement had its centre in Asia, its
origin in the vic-
;ories won by Japan at an interval often years. Over China first;
m Asiatic nation had proved itself capable of sharing in the parti-

ion of China on an equal footing with the Christian nations. Now
Dver Russia; an Asiatic nation had successfully resisted a Christian
empire whose power was then regarded as more formidable than

that of any other and on Chinese soil had
replaced by its own
imperial sway the dominion of the European power it had de
feated.
The lesson given by Japan to Asia had been further enforced by

the Russian revolution. On the frontier between Europe and Asia
the spectacle was witnessed of a mighty nation rising on the mor
row of its defeat against a military and administrative despotism of
venerable antiquity. For several months the overthrow of the
Czardom was believed to be imminent. should not the
Why
Oriental nations follow the example set by the Russian revolu
tionaries and overthrow either, as in China, a corrupt monarchy
which had proved incapable of defending its people against the
43
aggression of four or five foreign Powers, or, as in India, a foreign

Government established by conquest? From 1899 to 1905 British
India had been governed by a statesman who was one of the most
typical representatives of the Imperialist spirit and creed. Already
distinguished when appointed Viceroy of India for his expert
knowledge of the problems of the Far East, Lord Curzon had
displayed during his seven years rule the qualities and the defects
whose combination composed the perfect Chamberlainite: indus
try, obstinacy, ostentation, despotism, and an overbearing harsh
ness. But in Lord Curzon the overbearingness passed all bounds
and involved him in actions which, whether justifiable or not,
arrayed everyone against him. He had hardly entered upon office
when he claimed for himself, as Viceroy over three hundred
million subjects, an independence comparable with that possessed
by the freely elected Parliaments of the Dominions, and pursued
in the north around and beyond the passes of the
Himalayas a
policy of aggression which caused no little anxiety to the home
Government. He had antagonized the natives by taking steps to
check the influx of candidates for the university examinations with
the aim of retarding the growth of that intellectual
proletariat
whose temper alarmed the supporters of order in India. In 1905
he decided to divide Bengal into two separate parts, consolidating
one of them with Assam. It was a measure for which excellent
administrative arguments could be advanced. But its effect was
to create a province of Eastern Bengal and Assam in which
two-thirds of the population were Mohammedanc, thereby arous
ing what was nothing short of an insurrection among the Hindus.
At least he might have won for his policy the support of the solid
mass of Anglo-Indians But in the hope of conciliating the native
.
population he had ordered that the ill usage to which they were
subject at the hands of the conquering race should be punished as
severely as the sporadic acts of violence committed by the natives
against their masters. He had thus alienated the Anglo-Indians
also. By a final
caprice he quarrelled in 1905 with Lord Kitchener,
who after signing the peace treaty in South Africa had secured the
command of the Indian army. The original ground of quarrel
was a dispute as to the respective authority of the Commander-
in-Chief and the military member of the executive council, whom
we may regard as the Viceroy s minister for war. Kitchener
claimed complete independence in all
purely military questions.
44
Lord Curzon refused to admit the claim and demanded a measure
of control for his military member, in otherwords for himself. A
in London which pro
commission of inquiry was appointed
nounced in favour of Kitchener s contention, attributed only
Lord
minor functions to the military member and called upon
subordinate.
Curzon to appoint a new official to fill post
a in future
He proposed a candidate whose name appeared to spell defiance

to the of the Commission and who was not accepted. Lord
report
1
Curzon thereupon resigned.
He wassucceeded by Lord Minto, an old soldier who had been

a family which
Governor-General of Canada. If he belonged to
other families had gone over to Unionism
like so many great
Elliots was
some twenty years ago, the family tradition of the
with tact in Canada
Whig, and, moreover, he had performed
duties identical with those of a constitutional sovereign. He might,
British India a period of calm
therefore, be expected to bring to
the country by Lord
after the seven troublous years inflicted upon
had been
Curzon. Thus, when it took office, the Liberal Cabinet
2
freed from Lord Curzon in Asia, as in Africa

from Lord Milner.
militant
Even before the landslide ofJanuary 1906 the imperialism
of 1898 was crumbling. .
Haifa century earlier British India had already experienced

its
revolution. Having suppressed it at the cost

of much bloodshed,
had herself to govern the country with a scrupu
England pledged
to and
native beliefs and customs
lous impartiality, respect
so far as was possible
native subjects to administrative
appoint
the authorized biography
i For Lord Curzon viceroyalty see The Life ofLord Curzon, being
s
Ronald.-
of George Nathaniel, Marcuess
Curzon ofKedleston, by the Right Hon. theE arl of
Lovat India under Curzon and after 1911 see also
;
lav IQ28 vol ii, Viceroy of India-, Eraser,
entitled
to Lord Curzon s
the anonymous work extremely hostile government
Tvent?-
eieht Years in India. For the quarrel
between Lord Curzon and Lord Kitchener see the Lift
J Lord Kitchener by
of Sir George Arthur, 1920, vol. ii, pp. 199 sqq. m -
etra ri
doctnne.of administrative w
2 For the last few
years-this is a very important pomt-the
too hard. Our a^ministration-so shrewd observers and very
efficiency has been
driven
be a great deal more popular if it was a trifle
experienced observers assure me-would
Inefficient a trifle more We ought not to put mechanical efficiency at
elastic generally.
he fflKST. over-centralization; it
adminLation I need not tell the House has
Perfecdy efficient
is inevitable. The tendency mIndia is to over
a tendency to lead to
force administration to run in official grooves (H. ot U,
ride local authority and to
th Series, vol. cbocv, p. 881).
s Parliamentary Debates, 4
June 6, 1907, John Morley speech;
45
posts. She had kept her promise, though very slowly and very
incompletely. Official regulations,
whose terms, however, had
often been altered, had reserved for the natives the monopoly of
certain posts in the local government and had even admitted a
proportion of them to more important positions.

An Act of 1892,
couched however in very ambiguous and indirect language, had
empowered the Viceroy to introduce into the provincial councils
1
a proportion of elected members. These concessions had not been
uninfluenced by an agitation whose mouthpiece was a body which
met annually and entitled itself the Hindu National Congress .
Its adherents demanded for British India swaraj, Home Rule, a
Hindu Parliament, freely elected and governing the three hundred

million Indians by means of a responsible Cabinet, They did not
declare war on British sovereignty or civilization. They simply
claimed for the natives the right to collaborate on an equal footing
with the civil servants of British birth in the westernization of
India. They confined methods
their agitation to strictly legal
public speeches and the press. They

made little impression on the
imperialists of the Chamberlain school,
who were convinced at
the close of the nineteenth century that the concessions already
made were more than enough to satisfy the native races. My own
belief, wrote Lord Curzon in 1900, is that the Congress is totter
in India is to
ing to its fall, and one of my great ambitions while
2
assist it to a peaceful demise. During the last year of his vice-
royalty he would not have used the same language.
For the repercussion of the Japanese victories made itself felt and
a new party of extremists soon came into being. Who were the
leaders of this new movement? There was a certain Tilak, the
author of learned works in which he sought to prove that the
3
Vedic culture was the oldest and the most nordic of all cultures.
He began his career as an agitator by organizing a movement of
protest against the law which
had been passed prohibiting the
marriage of Hindu girls
before the age of twelve. 4 And his col-
1
55 & 56 Viet., Cap. 14: An Act to amend the Indian Councils Act, 1861 (Indian Councils
Act, 1892).
a
Lord Ronaldshay, The Life of Lord Curzon, vol. ii, p. 152.
8
The Orion or researches into the antiquity of the Vedas, 1893. The Arctic Home of the Vedas
being also a new Key to the interpretation of many Vedic texts and legends, 1903.
4 For Tilak and his
political career see D. V. Athalve, The Life ofLokomanya Tilak;
with
aforeword by C. R. Das, president-elect of the 36th National Congress, 1921 ; and the collection
D his political speeches: Bal Gangadhar Tilak, His Writings and Speeches. Appreciation by
Babu Aurobindo Chose (no date). For the revolutionary agitation in general see Valentine
46
AND IMPERIAL QUESTIONS
TARIFF
league was the Gandhi whose acquaintance we have already made.

He came from South Africa, famous throughout India for his
defence of his fellow Indians there agaiftst English persecution.
He had brought with him the programme the agitation must
follow. It was non-co-operation swadeshi, the boycotting of
,
everything English or European, institutions as well as goods. In

itself this method did not involve the use of violence. But it was
not long before the malcontents, not content with refusing to buy
British goods, publicly burned them. And very soon they grew
tired of these attacks on property, and assassinations by shooting
or bomb took their place. The movement was a return to the
national traditions, a revolt against western materialism and
utilitarianism, a movement to preserve Brahmanism in its inte
1
grity.
It attached itself to the avowed anti-Mohammedan agita
tion to which
the separation of the two Bengals had given birth.
The leaders, however, perceived the danger to their cause which
would be involved By a civil war between the Hindus and Mos
lems of which the British would reap the benefit, and sought for
a banner that would unite both against the common oppressor.
Moreover, both the Tolstoyan programme of passive non-co
operation and the dynamite outrages betrayed Russian influence.
The difference between the movement by which Japan had suc
cessfully asserted her hegemony in the Far East against the supre
macy of the European powers and this movement by which India
was attempting to throw off the British yoke may be summed
up as follows. In Japan a monarchy and an hereditary aristocracy
of ancient and proud traditions borrowed from Europe her indus
trial and military methods the better to resist the invasion of her
culture. In India an entire people, also the heir of an immemorial

tradition, borrowed from the European nations, though we must
admit from the least European of these, namely Russia, their
methods of revolutionary agitation to achieve the same end.
Under these circumstances it was an act of courage for John
Morley to accept, even perhaps to ask for, the post of Secretary of
State for India. He regarded himself as the official representative
Chirol, Indian Unrest: A Reprint, revised and enlarged Jrom The Times*, with an introduction
by Sir Alfred Ly all, 1 910. For a general view of the social and political problems connected
with the government of British India at this period see the excellent work by Joseph
Chailley, L Inde Britannique; Socittt indigene; Politique indigene; Les idfas directrices, 1910.
attempts made at this period in India to reinvigorate Brahmanism, see Dr.
1 For the
J. N. Farquhar, Modern Religious Movements in India, 1915.
VOL VI -4 47
in the Cabinet of the Gladstonian tradition. Perhaps in playing
this part he was a little too obviously conscious of his own impor
tance. He was a great Liberal, a Liberal veteran, a survivor of the
golden age of Liberalism, and as such his attitude towards the new
tendencies of the younger generation was an indulgent pity not
the less irritating for a tinge of disdain. Moreover, he was not very-
popular with his colleagues, beginning with Campbell-Banner-

man, who had given him the amusing nickname Priscilla, sugges
tive of a spinster and a bluestocking. But it cannot be denied that
he acquitted himself of the formidable task with firmness and pru
dence and as successfully as the circumstances permitted. He had
the good fortune to deal with a Viceroy of modest personality and
tractable temper, content in his relations with him to adopt the
attitude of a subordinate rather than an autocrat. He had also the
1
good fortune to be faced in the House of Commons by a leader

of the opposition who had nothing of Chamberlain s spirit. Bal-
four passed the word to his followers not to molest Morley, and
his orders were obeyed without difficulty at a time when the right
of the sword was no longer the fashionable creed in England. 2
1
For Morley Indian policy see Recollections by John Viscount Morley, Book V:
s A
Short
Page in ImperialHistory (vol. ii, pp. 147 sqq.). The reader will find there copious extracts
from his daily memoranda and his letters to Lord Minto. See also John Morley, Speeches on
Indian Affairs, Second Edition revised and enlarged; and on the other hand John Buchan,
Lord Minto: A Memoir, 1924. It is the life story of Lord Minto published by. his family
after his death. The author does his best to prove that Lord Morley s recollections place the
facts in a false light. According to Buchan the real author of the policy which Morley
would have us regard as his personal choice and imposed by him on Lord Minto was on the
contrary Lord Minto who, by flattering Morley s senile vanity, contrived to make him
believe that he was the originator when he was really obeying the Viceroy s dictation. In
fact Lord Morley does not conceal so often as Buchan would have us believe the points on
which he took Lord Minto s advice for example, the appointment of a native member
of the Viceroy s executive council. He even admits that in certain instances he was less
bold than the Viceroy. The latter wanted a majority of non-official members in the
Viceroy s legislative council. Morley opposed it. (H. of C., December 17, 1908; Parlia
mentary Debates, 4th Series, vol. cxcviii, pp. 1984-5.) On the other hand as regards the
composition of the new executive councils and on the question of an amnesty, whatever
Buchan may say, Minto was the conservative, Morley the reformer. And it remains
doubtful whether Lord Minto s liberalism was the result of deep convictions or mere
indolence. See for instance the account of him preserved by W. S. Blunt in his Diary for
*
October 25, 1909: ... He also told us about Minto, as Viceroy of India, a mere nonentity
in the Government, not even reading the most important documents laid before him.
On one occasion they tested this by gumming the leaves slightly together, which he
returned unopened (My Diaries, vol. ii, p. 292). For a good summary of the reforms
accomplished by Morley see E. Major, Viscount Morley and Indian Reform, 1910. Some
intere*sting details may be found in Syed Sirdar AH Khan, The Life ofLord Morley 1923,
. . .
pp. 194 sqq. For a general survey of British legislation affecting India consult Sir Courtenay
Ilbert s compendium, The Government of India : A brief historical survey of Parliamentary
Legislation relating to India, 1922.
2
Morley s Diary, August 2, 1906: I will take care that Balfour and Percy are kept well
informed of the truth of things. I don t think there is any predisposition in any quarter to
15
Whatever hopes the formation of a Liberal ministry, when the

Unionist Cabinet resigned in favour of Campbell-Bannerman
and his colleagues, aroused in some quarters, whatever fears it
aroused in others, were enhanced a few months after the General
Election by the incidents of die Fuller affair. Certain schools in
Eastern Bengal had taken part in the agitation of the extremists.
The Lieutenant-Governor of the province, Sir J. Bampfylde
Fuller, called upon the University of Calcutta to take disciplinary
measures against them. Lord Minto disapproved of this clemand
and asked him to withdraw it. Rather than obey he offered his
resignation. It was accepted and he was immediately replaced.
The incident caused a great stir among the Anglo-Indians, which
found an echo in London. But Morley made it plainly understood
that his Indian policy would not be a mere exhibition of weakness.
He systematically carried out a perfectly definite policy, on the
whole the reverse of that which Lord Cromer had followed in
Egypt. Lord Cromer had scrupulously respected the freedom of
the press Morley repressed its excesses. Lord Cromer had refused
:
pointblank the nationalist demand for a representative Parliament

at Cairo Morley, on the contrary, answered the claims of the
;
National Congress by a policy of concessions.

Yielding to Lord Minto s arguments and braving the wrath of
the hundred and fifty Radicals who under the title of the Indian
Committee constituted themselves the advocates at Westminster
of the Hindu rebellion, Morley authorized the Governor-General
to put into force regulations dating from the days of the East
India Company, by which his agents were empowered to prose
cute the authors of seditious articles; public meetings could be
prohibited at his discretion in particular districts, and dangerous
agitators even deported without trial On May 10, 1907, a vice
in certain proclaimed
regal ordinance subjected public meetings
areas to a severe control. June 3 the On
Viceroy gave full powers
to the local authorities to prosecute seditious articles. But at the
same time Morley informed Parliament and the nation that his
think ill of us/ May 3, 1907: *Balfour is behaving well, as might have been expected. He
told me that he had passed the word to his men that they are not to molest me. (Recollec
tions; vol. ii, pp. 83, 213.)
49
determination to liberalize the political institutions of British India
remained unshaken. 1 The Government intended to carry the
electiveand representative principle throughout the entire consti
tutional edifice of India. It also intended in fulfilment of the
the natives access even to the
promises made in 1861 to give
highest ranks of the civil service.
We may remark the conception,
inspired by Burke rather
than by Mill2 and perhaps suggested to
senate or
Morley by Lord Minto, of a species of consultative
council of notables (Imperial Advisory Council) in which the
side with the native
great landowners would sit side by princes.
This arrangement would, give its due weight to one of the great
conservative forces which the bureaucratic structure of an alien
to over
government has to some extent inevitably tended
shadow 3
To prepare the public mind for these impending re
.
forms Morley took the further step of nominating two Indian

members of the Council of India which assisted him at White
hall. He thus initiated the important measures which the British
Parliament adopted during the following years in execution of a
prearranged programme. On the one hand,
there was a press law
which authorized the police to suppress revolutionary organs and
confiscate copies of the newspaper and its printing apparatus, an
Act, based in fact on a statute passed in 1883 to repress the activi
for
ties of Irish anarchists in England, inflicting severe penalties
the fabrication and even, if it gave grounds for reasonable suspi
cion the mere possession of explosives, and a Statute withdrawing
acts of anarchist violence from the ordinary procedure of the
courts and trial by jury. 4 On the other hand, a solemn message
was sent from the King-Emperor to the princes and people of
India on the fiftieth anniversary of the date when the British
Government took over the territories hitherto governed by the
East India Company. It announced a very wide amnesty and at
the same time a prudent extension of the liberties granted to
1 H. of C, June 6, 1907 (Parliamentary Debates, 4th Series, vol. dxxv, pp. 883-4)-
2
See in the speech delivered by Morley at Arbroath, October ai, 1907, the extremely
involved passage in which the aged Radical advises young Hindus to seek the inspiration
of their liberalism in Burke rather than in Mill. In his speech ofJune 6, 1907 (ibid., p. 880)
he appeals to Mill whom he calls the teacher of his generation only to support the
legitimacy of Britain s paternal government in India.
5
Parliamentary Papers, August 26, 1907 (The Times, August 27, 1907).
4 The Act
regulating the Press and the Act dealing with explosives June 8, 1908; for the
detailed provisions of these two Statutes see The Times, July 9, 1908. Act subjecting anar
chist plots to a special jurisdiction, December n, 1908; for its provisions see The Times,
December ii, 1908.
50
India by the Indian Councils Act of 1892. The new Indian Coun
cils Act1 passed in 1909 by the British Parliament without any
2
very serious opposition did not alter the strictly advisory charac
ter of the provincial legislative councils. Nor did it alter their
distinctive system of representation a representation not of indi
viduals, but of interests effected in accordance with complicated
rules laid down by the Viceroy. And in yet other respects the
Bill was a less ambitious measure than the
important measure of
decentralization previously contemplated, less ambitious even than
the measure announced in December 1908. Lord Morley declared
with the utmost emphasis that the new Act must not be regarded
as a step towards parliamentary government, that neither now
nor at any later date would he take the responsibility of setting up
3
a parliament in India, But the membership of the legislative coun
cils was considerably increased so that they bore a closer resem
blance to parliaments. In future the election would be a genuine

election, not the mere recommendation to the Viceroy of a can
didate whom he was free to reject, and the competence of the
councils, particularly in matters of finance, was guaranteed and
extended. 4 And measures were taken to secure that on all the
councils except the Viceroy s the non-official members
legislative
should always be in a majority. 5 Further, Morley, with Lord
Minto s full
support, appointed a native to the Viceroy s executive
council, and the new statute empowered the Viceroy to set up
6
in conjunction with every organ of provincial government an

executive council to which Indians would be eligible on the same
terms as Europeans. It was not enough to satisfy the extremists :
9 Edw. 7, Cap. 4: An Act to amend the Indian Councils Acts 1861 and 1892 and the
1
Government of India Act, 1833 (Indian Councils Act, 1909).

a
For the Indian Councils Act of 1909 sec H. of L., December 17, 1908. Lord Morley s
speech (Parliamentary Debates, 4th Series, vol. cxcviii, pp. 1,974 sqq.) and the parliamentary
papers published at the same time; the report of the Royal
Commission appointed in
December 1908 which appeared in March 1909; also H, of C., April 19, 1909, T. F,
Buchanan s speech (ibid., $th Series, vol. iii, pp. 496 sqq., 1266 sqq.).
*
H. of L., December 17, 1908 (ibid., 4th Series, vol. cxcviii, p. 1995).
4 The second clause of the Act of
1892 granted the Viceroy s legislative council and the
provincial legislative councils the right to discuss the Budget.
But on this point it imposed
restrictions abolished by Clause 5 (b) of the Statute of 1909.
8
Critics remarked that the non-official members need not be natives and, therefore,
that the Councils though not containing a majority of officials might contain nevertheless
a majority ot Europcans (Wilfred Blunt, My Diaries, November 22, 1909).
The decision had been approved by the Cabinet on May 3, .907. But it had taken two
years to overcome the opposition of the King and a powerful section of the House of
Lords who considered that the step would give offence to the native princes (Sir Sidney
Lee, Kins ward VII, vol. ii, p. 38).
E<*
51
they werestill a
long way from swaraj. Nevertheless, the British
Government had good reason for satisfaction. It had conciliated
the moderate element of the population and without taking any
imprudent risk had given a more liberal character to the govern

ment of India.
Outbreaks of rebellion in Egypt; swadeshi in Bengal. Despite
differences of creed and language these were two different forms,
African and Asiatic, of an identical phenomenon, the revolt of
nationalities against empires, two repercussions of the same im
portant historical event the victory won by Japan on land and

,
sea, the breakdown of Russian imperialism in the Far East. We

have found it necessary to emphasize the grave significance of
these events, whose unexpected issue we shall witness in 1914, the
world war. And it is the more necessary because they show what
difficulties faced the new Liberal Cabinet from the outset. Tied by
its Gladstonian traditions to an anti-imperialist policy, it was
nevertheless responsible for the administration of the vast Colonial
Empire it had inherited, the largest the world had ever known.
Opposition speakers were in a position to exploit these difficul
ties against
Campbell-Bannerpaan s ministry, offer embarrassing
congratulations on the vigour with which it repressed revolu
tionary plots in Bengal, and force the Government to yield when
it
attempted to protect the Kaffirs in Natal from the violent
methods of repression adopted by the local authorities. But these
difficulties did not threaten the existence of the Government. At
the end of two formidable majority had not been
sessions its
seriously impaired, and no one could claim that its method of

governing the Empire had disappointed the expectations of the
electorate. It had
granted a system of complete self-government
to the Boers of South Africa and had
actively promoted political
and administrative reform in India. Moreover, its predecessors
had pursued too systematically the policy of diverting popular
feeling to imperial questions. The British public was heartily
weary of their policy of national honour and expensive victory,
and this weariness which contributed so powerfully to the Liberal
victory of January 1906 was no less evident two years later. .
There remained the problems of strictly domestic concern, whose

importance was the greater since the country displayed less interest
in colonial affairs. There was the Irish
question, always a deep line
of cleavage between the two parties. There was the religious and
52
IRELAND, EDUCATION, LABOUR
educational question, once more acute since the Education Act of
1902. And finally, there
was the labour question, also acute since
the Courts and House of Lords, sitting as the supreme
finally the
court of appeal, had undermined the privileged position of the
trade unions.
II DOMESTIC QUESTIONS:
We should hesitate to call the Irish question, in the strict sense,

a domestic question concerning the mother country. No doubt,
when the twentieth century opened England, Scotland, and
Ireland were parts of a single United Kingdom But the Irish,
.
or at least the vast majority of Irishmen, belonged to it in spite of

themselves. At the very door of Great Britain, Ireland was still a
a
Colony and a Colony which demanded the independence
,
*
Conservative and Unionist England refused. Twice we have seen
the Unionist Cabinet attempt a policy of concession, and twice

retreat when faced with the opposition of the Ulster colonists ,
who resented the grant of too much liberty to the natives of the
rest of the island. A change of Government supervened. Lord
Aberdeen returned from Canada to replace Lord Dudley as Lord
Lieutenant. Bryce, the eminent historian, and a recognized
authority on the American Constitution, succeeded Walter Long
as Chief Secretary. Sir Antony MacDonnell, the Undersecretary,
never vacated his post; he remained under Bryce as under Walter
under Wyndham. What Irish
Long, under Walter Long as
die new Cabinet adopt? They had pledged them
policy would
selves to govern Ireland according to Irish ideas and the Irish
idea of government was first and foremost that Ireland should be
the Irish, the genuine Irish, the Irish Nationalists.
governed by
and appointed government officials
Bryce yielded to their demands
and magistrates only on the recommendation of Redmond and
his friends. Even so, he did not transform the administration
rapidly enough to satisfy their impatience. He made them wait
53
over a year before he could be brought to sacrifice Sir Horace
Plunkett, whom John Dillon pursued with implacable hate, re
garding his policy of conciliation as more prejudicial to the claims
of Irish nationalism than the brutal opposition of the old Tories.
There remains the question of legislation in the strict sense. In the
place, what would be the effect of
first the important Statute of
1903 which, if carried into execution without a hitch, would
transfer all the arable land from the landlords to the tenants? 1
From the very beginning it had encountered more or less avowed
opponents among the Irish politicians, afraid lest they might be
compelled to witness the success of a reform of which they had not
been the authors, designed by those who had planned it to divert
the Irish from the pursuit of their political claims by satisfying
their economic. The confusion which followed its enactment, the
arrest of the policy of devolution, the fall of the Unionist Cabinet,
and the General Election favoured their opposition. They had no
difficulty in finding in the country districts of Ireland a host of
people whose discontent was easily inflamed.
The Act of 1903 contained clauses intended to prepare the way
for the resettlement on the land of die tenants previously evicted
by the landlords. But the funds provided were insufficient to

enable them to be put into execution. An agitation was organized
to secure the amendment of the Act of 1903 on this point, and the
enactment of another statute. And the tenants of urban properties
in their turn embarked on an agitation demanding the same safe
guards against the threat of eviction as the rural tenants possessed.

The Act did not compel the sale of land and although it prom
ised landlords who sold and tenants who purchased advantages
which fully compensated for any loss they might sustain, there
were landlords who nevertheless preferred the security of the
status quo to the risks and vexations of a sale. The word of com
mand went round to the tenants in many parts of Ireland to refuse
in future to pay their landlords a rent in excess of the annuity paid
to the State t>y
the tenants
purchased who would
their land. This
compel the landlords to sell, and the land purchase legally optional
would become, if the order were universally obeyed, for all
practical purposes compulsory.
1
For the history of the land laws, particularly during the period with which we are
Irish
concerned, see W. The Irish Land Acts: A Short Sketch of their History and Develop
F. Bailey,
ment, 1917. John E. Pomfret, The Struggle for Land in Ireland, 18QQ~-i923, 1930.
54
The Act dealt only with arable land and did not extend to
pasture.
But in those western districts which the statute termed
congested there was no lack of space on which to settle the
poverty-stricken
crowd huddled in the villages. The cultivators
had been evicted from their smallholdings, which had been
absorbed in large estates, vast solitudes abandoned to herds of
cattle. Did these unfortunates owe their dispossession solely to
human wickedness? Was it not chiefly due to the operation of
economic laws under the system of free trade common to England
and Ireland? If these areas were no longer under cultivation, was
it not because their cultivation was no longer profitable ? If new
cultivators were reinstalled, would they not be condemned to

inevitable bankruptcy and the land soon return to pasture once
more? Notwithstanding, public opinion clamoured for a resettle
ment and a plan of campaign was arranged to intimidate the
graziers.
Cattle were not mutilated: this cruel method adopted
thirty years earlier had unnecessarily revolted humanitarian feeling

in England. But at night the fences surrounding the pastures were
removed and the animals driven off. The following morning the
grazier could not find his beasts or, if he found them at all, it was
only after a tiring search, several miles from their pasture, scat
tered along the roads. The cattle-driving first organized during
the winter of 1906-7 steadily increased till the following autumn.
The magistrates, unfortunate choices from the village politicians,
either went on strike by refusing to sit on days when cases of
cattle-driving would come before the bench or refused to con

demn. The London press gave these disturbances all the publicity
the agitators could desire and called upon the Government to
take severe measures.
This was a policy which it was not easy for a Liberal Cabinet to
adopt. The General Election was scarcely at an end when
the
operation of the Crimes Act of 1887 had been suspended in the

districts, certainly very few, where it was still in force, and after a
few months opposition Bryce yielding to his colleagues wishes1
agreed to abandon the Arms Act of 1881, hitherto annually re
newed, which enabled the Government to prevent anarchy by
at the end
disarming seditious agitators. After he had exchanged
of 1906 the thankless task of governing Ireland for the more bril-
Bryce to Lord Htzmaurice, November 30, 1908 (H. A. L. Fisher, James Bryce, Viscount
1
Bryce ofDechmont, voLi pp. 35 sqq-)-
55
Kant and easier post of Ambassador at Washington, the Cabinet
found itself compelled to adopt repressive measures. But loyalty
to Liberal principles forbade enforcement of the provisions of the
last Crimes Act. The Cabinet could not forget that this statute,
like all its predecessors of the same kind, had been passed by a
Unionist Parliament in the teeth of Liberal protests. Steps were,
moreover, taken to give the disaffected a measure of satisfaction.
A Royal Commission was appointed, with Lord Dudley as chair
man, to inquire into the laws dealing with the congested districts
and discover what could be done to extend and improve them, 1
A Labourers Bill2 and a Town Tenants Bill3 were passed in 1906;
an Evicted Tenants Bill4 in 1907. Moreover, to better the condi
tions of the Irish lower classes within the limits of the existing
legislation and secure valuations of the land more favourable to

the tenants, the regulations governing the appointment of the
Estates Commissioners were modified, so that to be appointed to
the Board it would no longer be necessary to pass the prescribed
examinations. And four of the commissioners were deprived of
their posts to make room for men more agreeable to the Irish
politician. But the agrarian legislation had given birth to a prob
lem graver than those of which we have just spoken. The machin
ery of the statute of 1903 broke down,
1 A Royal Commission appointed to inquire into and report upon, the operation of the
Acts dealing with Congestion in Ireland, the working of the Congested Districts Board,
and the Land Commission under these Acts, and the relations of the Board with the Land
Commission and the Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction; what areas
(if any) outside the districts now scheduled as congested, require to be dealt with as con
gested; what lands are not conveniently situated for the relief of Congestion; what chan
ges in law and administration are needed for dealing with the problem of Congestion as a
whole, for facilitating the migration of the surplus population from congested areas to
other lands and generally for the bettering the condition of the people inhabiting congested
areas.Appointed July 2, it presented its report May 5, 1908.
ipo<5,
7, Cap. 37: An Act to amend the law relating to Labourers in Ireland and to
2
6 Edw.
make provision with respect to the application of a portion of the Ireland Development
Grant (Labourers [Ireland! Act, 1906). The object of the Statute was to authorize the build
ing of cottages at the public cost and make it easier for farm labourers to acquire pieces of
land.
3
6 Edw. 7, Cap. 54 : An Act to improve the position of Tenants of certain Houses,
Shops or other Buildings in Ireland (Town Tenants [Ireland] Act, 1906). The object of the
Statute was to give the tenant the right to be indemnified for any improvements of the
property he had made during his lease, and also when the refusal to renew the lease was
judicially declared unreasonable .
*
7 Edw. Cap. 56 An Act to facilitate the possession of land for certain Evicted
7, :
Tenants in Ireland and for other purposes connected therewith, and to make provision
with respect to the tenure of office by the Estates Commissioners (Evicted Tenants [Ireland]
Act, 1907). The Act empowered the Estates Commissioners to acquire land by expropria
tion and settle on it farmers evicted by their landlords. But an amendment introduced in
the House of Lords restricted the number of possible beneficiaries to 2,000.
56
The Act could not be said to have failed in view of the fact that
by 1907 one-third of the cultivated area had changed hands as a

result of the combined operation of the Land Act of 1903 and the
land purchase Acts. But from one point of view it had been
earlier
too successful and the host of land-hungry peasants who took
advantage of the law to demand land was so numerous that the
funds available to satisfy them were giving out. In 1903 the
Government had undertaken to issue land bonds to the annual
value of .5,000,000 bearing interest at 2| per cent. But as a result
of the general depreciation of government securities it now found
obliged to borrow below par; in July 1907 the value of the
itself
bonds fell to 83. To make up the difference between the real price
of issue and the nominal value of the bonds a clause in the Act of
1903 which no one seems to have noticed when it was passed
1
empowered the Government when certain allocations from the

imperial budget had been exhausted to obtain the necessary funds
from the Irish ratepayer. This actually happened in 1907. We
can well imagine the indignation of these ratepayers, committed
as they were to the principle that the entire United Kingdom, not
Ireland alone, must pay the cost of a measure which they regarded
as a reparation due to Ireland from Great Britain. What was to be
done? Pay the landlord in bonds instead of cash? Make the sum
first charge on the premium of 12 per cent which
required a
according to the provisions of the original statute was to be added
to the money obtained by the loan? Issue bonds in future bearing
3 instead of 2j per cent interest? Or simply .make the Treasury
bear the entire cost of the fall in Government securities ? The
Chancellor of the Exchequer, Asquith, informed the House that
he was studying the question. He explained in language sufficiently
mystifying that they were in search of an arrangement which
would burden neither the British nor the Irish taxpayer. In any case,
he added, the financial arrangement made in 1903 must be revised;
he intended to reform it on a sounder and more equitable basis 2 .
In other words, the Land Act of 1903 was declared bankrupt. No

one in the Nationalist party was displeased by the bankruptcy.
1
If we can believe Wyndham (H. of C, July 5, 1907; Parliamentary Debates, 4th Series,
vol. cbexvii, pp. 1,019-20) he never intended to impose this burden on the Irish ratepayer.
But his explanations are very involved and, when all is said, prove only that when the Bill
was passed in 1903 everyone expected a rise not a fall in the value of Government securi
ties. See Asquith s trenchant reply. (Same sitting ibid., p. 1,026.)
2
H. of C., July 5, 1907 (Parliamentary Debates, vol. clxxvii, p. 1029).
57
While the economic problems, for which the late Government

had hoped to find a solution acceptable to all parties, were be
coming once more a source of discontent, the great political and
national question of Home Rule remained unsolved. On this
point the Liberal party seemed bound by Gladstone s former
pledge to the Nationalists which it had been prevented from per
forming already only by the opposition, twice repeated, of the
House of Lords and the opinion of the majority of Englishmen.
On the eve of forming his Cabinet Campbell-Bannerman, as we
have already seen, had refused to yield to Lord Rosebery s demand
and had solemnly declared that on this point, as on all others, he
remained faithful to the tradition of Gladstone. Would he then
reintroduce in its integrity, immediately after his accession to
office, a Home Rule Bill on the lines of those rejected in 1886 and
1893 ? If the Liberal majority had not been so overwhelming and
the eighty Irish members had held the fate of the Government in
their hands they might perhaps have dared to demand it and the
Cabinet have been compelled to obey their orders to its own ruin.
But, as we know, this was very far from the case. Campbell-
Bannerman was, therefore, in a position to restrict himself to the
more prudent programme he had traced in November 1905, and
secure for itthe preliminary approval of the Nationalist leaders.
He would persuade the Irish to accept a partial measure, an instal
ment of representative control and administrative reform, by
convincing them that not only was it no obstacle to.a more radical
programme but a step towards its accomplishment. What would
be the nature of this payment on account with which the Irish
electorate was asked to be provisionally content? Bryce, the
analyst of the American constitution, seemed at first sight better

fittedthan any other man to devise the necessary formulas and it
would appear that during the summer of 1906 he opened negotia
tions through the channel of Sir
Antony MacDonnell with the
two heads of the National Irish League, Redmond and Dillon. In
November it was rumoured that the Government had no inten
tion at present of granting Ireland a Parliament and
simply pro
posed to pursue the policy of devolution the late Cabinet had
adopted and dropped, by setting up in Dublin a body partly
58
elected, partlynominated by the executive, not to legislate but to

supervise
the execution of statutes passed at Westminster. 1 The
negotiators no doubt found themselves faced by two problems.
Should the new body be entrusted with the control of the police?
What control should be given or refused to the clergy of the
various denominations, particularly to the Catholic hierarchy,
over the administration of the educational system set up by the
British Parliament? When in December Bryce
resigned his
Secretaryship to go to the United States, the Unionists spread the
report that it was because on the former
question he had met with
the successful opposition of Sir Antony MacDonnell. They went
so far as to prophesy that Sir Antony would replace him as Chief
2
Secretary. It was an idiotic rumour. Sir Antony had never been a
with the Nationalists, who regarded him as a traitor,
persona grata
who had espoused in Asia the cause of British imperialism and
was only too ready to treat his Irish compatriots as Hindus. If they
had accepted such a man their policy could have been indistin
guishable from O Brien s. In fact, according to
reliable Nationalist
testimony, Bryce had not been in the least disposed to grant the
Irish more than MacDonnell advised, and his relations with Red
mond and Dillon had been the reverse of cordial. 3 When he was
succeeded by Augustine Birrell, a witty man of letters and a pro
fessional sceptic, who exchanged the Board of Education where
he had not been a success for the Irish Secretaryship, the appoint
ment was certainly regarded as a victory by the Nationalist leaders.
Had he renewed negotiations with them? If he had, had at least a
conditional agreement been reached? In any case, on May 7
Birrell, in whose honour the Nationalist members of Parliament
had given a banquet the previous night, expounded the minis
terial scheme.
The
Bill introduced that day set up a central representative
Council of 106 members, of whom eighty-two would be elected,
twenty-four nominated by the executive. Of the forty-five
Irish
administrative departments, eight would be subject to its control.

This seems very little, but we must remember that by reason of
1
The Times, November 9, 1906.
*
The Times, December 22, 1906.
8
T. P. O Connor, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, p. 131. Cf. T. M. Healy letter
s to his
brother, March 16, 1906: Redmond is cogitating over some plan but what it is I don t
know Bryce is
! a Belfast man without Morley s Irish sympathies. Antony MacDonnell
isthe driving power and his models are Hindu (T. M. Healy, Letters and Leaders of my
Time, vol. ii, p. 476).
59
their importance these eight departments, which included the
Local Government Board, the Department of Agriculture and
Technical Instruction, the Congested Districts Board, and public
education in all its branches, amounted to over half the Irish
1
Administration. It was estimated that these departments cost the
nation .2,000,000 a year. To this estimate the Government
proposed to add .650,000, and with this annual revenue of
^f 2,650,000 to form an Irish Fund to be placed at the disposal of
the Council, which if it had no legislative powers would at least
possess within the limits of the eight departments specified by the

Bill, entire control over the administration of the existing Irish
Statutes, the sole reservation being the Lord Lieutenant s veto

absolute or suspensory at his discretion upon any decision the
Council might take. Of the police there was not a word. Birrell
was content to point out that the number of departments subject
to the Council control might be subsequently extended and to
s
remark that if the new Council after some years is a success, why,
then, I dare say it may pave the way to Home Rule Nor was .
anything said about any right of the clergy to be elected to the

Council, or any control they might be granted over the educa
tional establishments of the country. On the contrary, it would
seem that this control was abandoned unreservedly to an assembly
of laymen elected by a suffrage practically universal. 2
Redmond had no desire to oppose openly a Bill he personally
liked. But he saw
immediately how unlikely it was to win the
approval of Irish public opinion. His language was therefore
hesitating and he referred the decision to a national Convention of
the party to be held within a few days in Dublin. A movement of
opposition to the Bill was at once organized in Dublin, headed

by the clergy. On May 14 the Freeman s Journal published the
names of 107 priests who declared their intention to participate in
the Convention. It met on the 2ist. No Convention hitherto held
in Ireland had been so well attended. It was Redmond who
opened
the proceedings by proposing a resolution which declared that
Ireland could not be satisfied with half-measures and that they
1
Augustine Birrell, speech at Queen s College, Belfast, November 23, 1907: He had
done his best to enable the Irish people to administer their own affairs over seven-twelfths
at least of the great departments of the Irish State.
2
The real short title of the Bill was Irish Council Bill*. But it became usual to refer to
it which did much to prejudice Irish public opinion against it.
as the Irish Councils Bill ,
The completely false impression was given that the Government was seeking to divide
authority among several different councils.
60
should press upon the British Government with all their strength
and power to introduce a measure for the establishment of a
native Parliament, with a responsible Executive, having power
over all
purely Irish affairs The resolution was passed unanim
.
ously. In these circumstances, the Government had no choice but

to withdraw the Irish Council Bill. Balfour was
ready with ironi
cal congratulations, calling the attention of Parliament to the
queer experiment made by CampbeJl-Bannerman and his col
leagues in governing Ireland in accordance with Irish ideas .

Once again the policy of moderate concessions, of devolution ,
had failed. In 1905 it had been defeated
by the intransigence of the
Ulster loyalists. In 1907 it was faced by the intransigence of the
Nationalists which was now assuming the novel form of a
propa
ganda, mentioned this year for the first time in the London press,
though actually Sinn Fein was already eight years old. But it had
made its first appearance during the great outburst of nationalism
which marked the centenary of the rebellion of 1798 and during
the following years, when revolutionary feeling had
temporarily
died down in Ireland and the followers of O Brien were working
with Lord Dunraven s group to carry out immediate measures of
economic reform, the stream of Sinn Fein, though its source did
not dry up, flowed more or less underground. What was the
creed of the new group ? The leading figure of the movement,
Arthur Griffith, in his paper, The United Irishman, made no
direct attack on any form, of Irish agitation. He was full of sym
pathy for the Gaelic League and its efforts to revive the Irish lan
guage. In principle he condemned neither parliamentary action
nor armed revolt if circumstances should recommend either.
But as things were they were both
inopportune, and he advo
cated the employment of another method, borrowed, he said,
from the Hungarians of 1861. The latter, who at that time were
agitating for the re-establishment of the constitution of 1848, had
acted as though it were still in force, taking the oath according to
the forms then prescribed, paying no attention to official docu
ments, and refusing to pay taxes. In a few years they had gained
the victory. If the Irish wished to restore the constitution of 1782,
of Union of 1 800, they should follow
illegally abolished by the Act
this Hungarian
example. No more members should be sent to
Westminster, a council of Three Hundred should be set up in
Dublin which would constitute a de facto Irish Parliament, and
61
courts of arbitration to loyal Irishmen would
whose jurisdiction
submit their disputes instead of employing the regular courts. The
British Army, whose ranks and prestige had been swelled too
also British goods whose
long by Irish recruits, must be boycotted,
the growth of a national m-
importation had so long prevented
a species of political
dustry. Foreign rule must be destroyed by
strike or passive rebellion, refusal to co-operate with the estab
lished authority in any shape or form, the determination to do
ourselves alone SimrFein. This was the
everything ourselves , ,
which met
programme publicly adopted by a National Council
at Dublin on November 28, 1905, barely a week before the fall of
Balfour s ministry, to embody Griffith s policy in a distinct orga
nization. It was a to speak Hindustani, of complete
programme,
swadeshi. 1
The moderation the following months by the
displayed during
Nationalist leaders, and their close alliance with the Liberal
Government, assisted the propaganda of Sinn Fein. In the autumn
2
of 1906 the movement counted only twenty branches two years ,
3
later there were over a hundred. The Nationalists noticed a falling
off in the financial contributions received from America. It was
because Sinn Fein was recruiting American subscribers to its
funds. In January 1907, when the Corporation of Dublin was re-
elected, Sinn Fein for the first time put forward
candidates in
to the Nationalists. After the failure of the Irish Coun
opposition
cil Bill three Nationalist members of Parliament resigned on
the
ground that had

they Sinn Fein and, when in September
joined
the Nationalist wished to call a large public meeting in
party"
a
Dublin, they were obliged to transform it into private meeting
to prevent its
capture by the Sinn Feiners.
There was no reason indeed to take too seriously a movement
led by men who were cranks, even more than fanatics. But the
success of their propaganda was nevertheless ominous. On the
outskirts of the official Nationalist party Tim Healy made
advances to Sinn Fein. The United Irish League broke away from
the control of its founder, William O Brien. Michael Devlin, who
1 For the
origins of Sinn Fein see Robert Mitchell Henry,
Modern Ireland in the Making:
The Evolution of Sinn Fein, 1920; George Lyons, Some Recollections of George Griffith and his
Times, 1923; also Griffith s pamphlets, The Sinn Fein Policy, 1904;
The Resurrection of
Hungary, A Parallel for Ireland, 1905.
a
Robert Mitchell Henry, Modern Ireland in the Making ... p. 77-
*
Annual Register, 1908, p. 257.
62
had just refurbished an old revolutionary association, the Ancient
Order of Hibernians, with a programme less strictly. Catholic but
not less nationalist, introduced Hibernians into the local branches
of the League. They prevented O
Brien from speaking at public
meetings and finally compelled him to sign at Dublin on Decem
ber 25, 1907, a formal treaty of peace with Redmond which
amounted to a surrender, since it
began by professing the creed
of nationalism whole and undiluted. Under the potent influence
of these heated nationalist passions Redmond s imagination caught
fire; he celebrated the memory of the rebels of 1798 and held
them up asan example to the rising generation. The Freeman s
Journal paid homage to Sinn Fein and hinted that after all its
programme was perhaps not irreconcilable with that of the party
which looked to the Journal for guidance. At Westminster the
Nationalist members officially declared that they reserved entire
freedom of action unhampered by any engagement or obligation
towards the Liberal majority. At Jarrow-on-Tyne, where a seat
had fallen vacant, a Labour candidate had come forward in oppo
sition to the Unionist and Liberal candidates. He was an Irishman
by birth and expected on that ground to win from the Liberal

candidate the votes of the large body of Irish workmen in the
constituency. But the Irish would give their confidence only to a
candidate completely their own. The presence of four rival candi
dates in this English constituency gave the momentary impression
that the arrangement of parties had been totally dislocated. Was
there then a complete rupture between the English Liberals and
the Irish Nationalists?No. Personal relations between Redmond
and Dillon on the one hand, and Campbell-Bannerman on the
other, remained friendly. The former were therefore suspected of
having adopted a more favourable attitude than they would
admit towards the compromise proposed in May, and die latter,
on the other hand, of willingness to advance further on the path
of concession to Ireland, the moment circumstances became more
propitious. When the session of 1908 opened, the latter suspicion
proved well founded.
The Prime Minister and the Nationalist leader agreed that the
latter should introduce in the House of Commons a motion affirm
ing the principle of Home Rule, and that Campbell-Bannerman

should accept it. The arrangement could not be fully carried out.
Redmond was obliged to dispense with the presence of Campbell-
63
Bannerman, overtaken by the disease which would carry him off.

1
Nevertheless it was evident, two years after the General Election,

that the mere fact that a Liberal Government was in office had
made a compromise impossible, and that sooner or later, as at the
close of the last century, England must decide for or against the
programme of complete Home Rule.
Sooner or but certainly not immediately For the Liberal

later, !
statesmen on the morrow of the General Election, the Irish ques

tion was not urgent. It was not on that question that the election
had been fought. The claims of other clients must be met before
those of the Irish Home Rulers, who did not even possess the
means of putting pressure on the Liberal leaders. For the over
Liberal majority swamped their eighty-four represen
whelming
tatives. These were first and foremost the Nonconformists,
clients
aroused, as we have seen, from their political inertia by the Educa

tion Act of 1902. They had not been content with the agitation
they conducted throughout the country by their passive resis

tance to the rate collector when he called upon them to contri
bute by paying their rates to the support of the denominational
schools. In every constituency they had organized the Liberal
victory of 1906. They had never before sent so many members to
a British Parliament. In this respect the Election of 1906 had
effected nothing short of a revolution. Some 180 Dissenters sat in
the new House. 2 The Congregationalists were best represented
as might have been expected of the most political and republican
1
T. P. O Connor, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman,1908, pp, 156 sqq.; L. G. Redmond
Howard, John Redmond, 1910, p. 217; J. A. Spender, The Right Honourable Sir Henry
Catnpbell-Bannerman, 1923, vol. ii, p. 38.
*
Free Church Year Book, 1906, p. 306: At a luncheon given by the Liberation Society on
February 27, 1906, the chairman gave the following detailed figures, amounting to a
slightly smaller total: Congregationalists 65; Wesleyans 30; Baptists 14; Presbyterians 22;
Unitarians 14; Calvinistic Methodists 8 Primitive Methodists 7; Friends 7; United Metho
;
dists 3. To these figures we must add the seven or eight Nonconformists (probably Wes
leyans or Unitarians) who were Unionist members. Nor was this simply a temporary
phenomenon. At the General Election of January 1910 the number of dissenters elected
was still no less than 125 (53 Congregationalists, 25 Wesleyans, 8 Calvinistic Methodists,
7 Primitive Methodists, 3 United Methodists, 15 Baptists, 7 Unitarians, 6 Quakers, I Pres

byterian) (Free Church Year Book, 1910, p. 214) that is to say, dissenters were returned for
-125 of the 315 seats won by the Liberal and Labour parties, instead of iSo out of 430. The
proportion is practically the same.
of the sects all had their
but representatives. When to these
Dissenters we
add thirteen Scotch Presbyterians, 1 sixteen Jews, 2
eighty Irish Catholics and a handful of English Catholics (less
than ten), the number of members not belonging to the Church
of England reaches 300. With a loss of only forty more seats,
the Established Church would not have possessed a majority in
the Commons. Nothing similar had been witnessed since the
days of Cromwell. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, Asquith,
and the President of the Board of Education, Augustine Birrell,
were at least of Nonconformist origin. Lloyd George was the
hero of Welsh Nonconformity. The entire Protestant world out
side the Church of England expected as its strict right the imme
diate repeal of the Act of 1902.
On April 6, 1906, Augustine Birrell expounded in the House of
Commons the main features of the Government s Bill. The first
clause would lay down the principle that no school should be
recognized as a public elementary school unless it was a school

provided by the local educational authority. In other words, no
denominational teaching would be given in any public elementary
school. This did not mean that public education would be strictly
secular. An amendment introduced in this sense when the clauses
of the Bill were being discussed received only sixty-three votes,
and an amendment moved by Chamberlain he had never liked
the Act of 1902 and this intervention was his last escapade before
he disappeared from political life relieving teachers from the
obligation of giving religious instruction, while giving parents
the right to secure for their children whatever denominational
instruction they preferred, to be given in school but at their own
cost, received only 172- The only form of religious instruction
which would be legal in future and would, in fact, be given almost
universally would be undenominational teaching, simple Bible
teaching it was usually termed, to be given by the teacher himself.
Special arrangements could still be made with those non-provided
schools which were compelled by lack of funds to seek financial
aid from the State. Clause 2 of the Bill laid down the principles
by which they would be governed. The local authority would

become responsible for the upkeep of the buildings and would
1 FreeChwch Year Book, 1906, p. 306.
*
There were 32 Jewish candidates (15 Unionists, 17 Liberals). Of these 16 were returned
(12 Liberals, 4 Conservatives). There had been 12 Jews in the House of Commons returned
in 1900, 8 Unionists and 4 Liberals (Jewish World, quoted by The Times, February 1, 1906).
65
have the right to alter or enlarge them. Outside school hours they
would remain at the owners free disposal, but during school
hours the local authority would have entire control that is to
say, in country districts the Nonconformist
child would no longer
be obliged to receive Anglican instruction. The Bill, in the lan
guage of a Liberal speaker, was the Magna Carta of the village
Nonconformist. .
The measure was not in reality quite so simple as this. Those

former free schools, which in 1902 had become the non-provided
schools of the new system, if they wished to remain public ele
mentary schools, could nevertheless obtain special facilities for
the denominational teaching they had given hitherto. It must not
exceed two hours a week. The cost could not be defrayed by the
local authority and it could not be given during the hours when
the children were obliged to attend school nor by a teacher em
ployed by the public authority. These ordinary facilities to use
,
the jargon of the Bill, of which the Anglican Church might take
advantage, were obviously extremely restricted. It was not the
same with the extended facilities granted in urban areas, that is

in every borough or urban district whose population exceeded
5,000, if four-fifths of the parents asked for them, and provided
there were in the same locality other schools which could be
attended by children whose parents objected to this religious in
struction. What in fact were these schools to which this clause
accorded special privileges ? With the exception of the Jewish
schools in the East End of London they were Catholic schools
founded for the use of the Irish proletariat of all the large towns in
the kingdom. The Liberals could not dispense with the Irish vote,
the Labour party still less. This curiously illogical concession was
the result. The Government hoped by this Bill to satisfy the Non
conformists in the country districts without depriving the Irish
Catholics of the advantages conferred upon them by the Act of
1902. In the event the Bill roused the opposition, as violent as it
was legitimate, of the Anglican Church without satisfying either
the militant Nonconformists, indignant at the favour shown to
Roman Catholicism, o* the Catholics themselves, who were not
content even with the extended facilities they were offered.
Clause 4, which defined these facilities, left the local authority free
to grant or refuse them. The Catholics demanded that it should be
compelled to grant them. The Bill passed its third reading on
66
Monday, July 30, by a majority of only 169. It was a considerable

majority, no doubt, but far less than the normal majority for a
Government measure. The Irish Nationalists had voted solidly
against the Bill. And if the Nonconformists had voted for it, it
was with reluctance.
The Bill had now to face the House of Lords, where the Angli
can Church was supreme and Catholicism well represented, but
the Nonconformists the merest handful. The House of Lords did
not throw out the Bill straightaway. It passed the first and second
readings at the beginning of August. But when the House re
assembled in October and it was debated clause by clause, the
Lords transformed it into a measure of a totally different charac
ter. They extended the extended facilities to rural as well as
urban areas, requiring moreover the consent of only two-thirds of
the parents instead of four-fifths. They authorized the teachers to
give denominational instruction, and this not only in the non-
provided schools under the Act of 1902, but also in the provided
schools. The Bill, as shaped by the joint labours of the Govern
ment and the House of Commons, empowered the local authori
ties to take over the free schools on certain conditions; as re
modelled by the House of Lords it obliged them to do so. Indeed,

the Lords went still further and repealing a provision of the Act of
1870 which the legislature had not dared to touch in 1902, de
prived the local authorities of the right, of which a very small
1
minority had taken advantage, to give no religious instruction
1
Not, however, from the point of view we should call in France laiqtte . See the inter
esting remarks by Ramsay MacDonald, The Education Bill; the Secular Solution (Fort-
It is of some interest to observe that
nighny Review; vol. boocbc, p. 715: April 15, 1908):
the areas in England and Wales where no religious instruction in public schools is given
are found mostly in districts where "conversion" is regarded as the essential characteristic
of
religion.
Out of the 70 schools in Cardigan for instance, 66 have no such instruction;
out ofthe loo in Carmarthen, 62 are purely secular. The fact that in Wales there are over
1 60 schools with a time-table which is purely secular, so far from condemning the religious
indifference ofthe Principality, ought really to be put in the forefront ofthe reasons show
ing how religiously minded the Welshman is. Clause 7 of the Code of Instructionsfor Public
Elementary Schools 1906 authorized teachers to add to their lessons of English history lessons
in
citizenship.
But the Cabinet categorically rejected Chiozza Money s proposal to make
this instruction in citizenship compulsory (H. of C., July 5, 1906; Parliamentary Debates,
4th Series, vol. cbc, p. 237). The Report ofthe Board of Education quotes the language used
in this clause of the code when it lays down that this secular moral instruction may be
either incidental, occasional and given as opportunity arises, or given systematically as a
course of graduated instruction. The teaching should be brought home to the children by
whatever in the schools. In future, no school would be supported
by public money, which did not find a place in its time-table for
religious instruction.
What would the Government do? Work through the Bill
again clause by clause, making concessions to the Upper Chamber

on a particular clause, refusing them on another? It would be an
endless task. The Cabinet decided to ask the Commons to reject
the Lords amendments en bloc and on December 12 the House
voted accordingly by a majority of 416 to 107. Nevertheless,
there was still hope of saving the Bill. Why not attempt to reach
a compromise between the two Houses by private negotiations?
It would seem that the
Archbishop of Canterbury was in favour
of the suggestion. He remained throughout on friendly and even
intimate terms with the Prime Minister. But Balfour thought
otherwise, and rejected the proposals made by the Government,
though they were in fact so conciliatory that they would no doubt
have rendered the Bill unacceptable to the Radicals if by chance
the Unionist leaders had accepted them. He regarded the Act of
1902 as his own work, possibly his masterpiece, and wanted it
preserved in its entirety. Moreover, as an expert parliamentary
tactician he perceived that it was a favourable
opportunity to
avenge his crushing defeat at the polls the previous January.
Apparently, the country was up in arms for or against die Bill.
The House of Commons had been heated. Only

debates in the
a ruthless application of the closure had enabled them to be
concluded in three months. And the galleries had been
crowded throughout. The Established Church, the Catholics,
the Protestant sects had multiplied public meetings, petitions,
demonstrations of every description. But, despite appearances,
the agitation was superficial. The great mass of the electorate
took no interest in the struggle, and the Anglican Church
and the supporters of the status quo could take advantage of
their indifference. By refusing any amicable arrangement he
defied the Government to appeal to the country by dissolving
reference to their actual surroundings in town or country and should be illustrated as

vividly as possible by stories, poems, quotations, proverbs, and examples drawn from
history or biography*. The report adds: The whole subject of Moral Instruction needs
careful handling. , , . Though few would care to deny that morals can be taught to children
apart from the truth of revealed religion, yet as they are closely bound up with religion
and derive their surest sanctions from religion, great care must be taken to avoid any con
flict of laws or
clashing of canons. To do this may seem difficult until the experiment is
made* (pp. 24-5).
68
Parliament. They will not dissolve, he declared; they know
1
better.
And in fact, when the House of Lords on December 17, on the
motion of Lord Lansdowne, maintained its amendments by a
majority of 142 to fifty-three, the Prime Minister simply dropped
the Bill on which both Houses had wasted so many months.
After this, it was all very well for Campbell-Bannerman to dub
irony director-in-chief of both Houses. He only
2
Balfour in
enhanced his opponent prestige. Chamberlain
s banished by ill-
health from the party arena, and the Act of 1902 saved from the
grave peril which threatened it at the beginning of the year, he

was in truth the hero of the hour. Lloyd George might deliver
attacks on the Upper House which King Edward regarded as a
breach of constitutional usage. 3

And the Premier might arouse
the applause of the Commons by his declaration, that a way must
be found, a way will be found, by which the
will of the people
expressed through their elected representatives in this House

will
4
be made to prevail These were but distant threats. The Consti
.
tution did indeed provide a means to enforce immediately the

will of the nation, an appeal to the country by dissolving Parlia
ment. But it was a step which CampbeU-Bannerman and his
colleagues dared not take.
The King s speech which opened the session of 1907 did not
even allude to education. It merely contained a passing threat
addressed to the House of Lords and the announcement that the
Cabinet had under consideration the best method of settling dis
putes between the two Houses. But something must be done
to
the disastrous effect produced by the defeat of the Educa
repair
tion Bill. The West Riding County Council had refused in 1906
to pay the teachers of four non-provided schools that portion of
their salary which in the Council s opinion was the remuneration
for their denominational instruction. The refusal had been pro-
j
1
Speech at the Junior Constitutional Club, November 28, 1906.
2
H. of C., December n, 1906 (Parliamentary Debates, 4th Series, vol. cbcvii, p. 157).
8
Speech at the Palmerston Club at Oxford, December i, 1906. For the King s protests
seej. A. Spender, The Life of the Right Hon. Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, vol. ii, pp. 313
sqq.
*
H. of C,, December 20, 1906 (Parliamentary Debates, 4th Series, vol. cbcvii, p. 1740).
69
nounced illegal by the Court of first instance, legal by the Court
of Appeal, and finally illegal by the House of Lords in its capacity
as supreme court of
appeal at the very moment when as a legisla
ture it had defeated the Education Bill in December. Why not
legalize by an express Statute a procedure as to whose present

legality the judges were divided? A Bill to this effect, consisting
of a single clause, was introduced on February 26 by MacKenna,
who had just succeeded Birrell at the Board of Education. The
Bill relieved the local authorities of the cost estimated at a
fifteenth of the religious instruction given
of the education rate
in non-provided schools. It was sufficient to alarm the Anglicans,
too little to placate the Dissenters. Nothing more was heard of
the Bill, which was silently dropped by the Government at the
close of the session.
If, however, legislation was evidently extremely difficult, in
deed practically impossible, could not some indirect method be
found by which the Ministry might achieve its object without
having to face the opposition of the House of Lords? By a series
of administrative regulations the Board of Education laid down
the principle that no financial assistance should be given to the
training colleges, often private foundations of an Anglican com
1
plexion, unless they undertook not to impose any denominational
2
test
upon their pupils. It extended the application of this rule to
institutions for secondary education and without going back on
the past decided that no financial aid should be given to them
unless the majority of the board of managers were nominees of
the public authority and if any denominational test was imposed
1
The Report of the Board of Education for the year 1909-10 gives interesting statistics as
to the training colleges of both descriptions, denominational and nndenominational for
the three preceding school years. In 1907-8 the denominational training colleges provided
4,945 places, the undenominational 6,001; in 1908-9 the denominational 4,903, the un
denominational 6,974; in 1909-10 the denominational 4,862, the undenominational 7,431
that is to say, the undenominational training colleges had made indisputable progress,
the denominational had remained stationary. The insignificant decline in the number of
places is explained by the transfer of two colleges from primary to secondary education.
During the following years, as a result of the financial aid given by the Board of Education
to the foundation of new training colleges, the balance in favour of the undenominational
colleges steadily increased. In 1914 there were twice as many places available in the un
denominational training colleges as in the denominational (S. J. G. Moore, The Schools and
Social Reform: The Report of the Unionist Social Reform Committee on Education, with an intro
duction by the Right Hon. F. E. Smith, 1914, p. 37).
2
This, we must once more assert, was not secularism. In 1907 the Government officials
even attempted, though the attempt failed, to reinforce in training colleges for primary
school teachers the obligation of religious though undenominational instruction. See two
articles by Graham Wallas, The Nation, July TO, 24, 1909.
70
on managers or teachers. Moreover, the Government could have
recourse to the expedient of introducing into the Budget a special
credit which constitutional usage would not allow the House of
Lords to reject, since by universal consent it could not amend the
Budget. Admittedly in violation of a clause in the Education Act
of 1870 a credit of ^100,000 was provided to enable the local
authority to construct a school in any district where it seemed
desirable to destroy the monopoly of the Anglican Church. 1
This was all, and despite the indignant protests of the opposition
speakers it amount to much. The Bill to settle disputes
did not
between the two Houses, which the speech from the throne had
seemed to foreshadow, never made its appearance. The only step
taken was to introduce on June 24 a motion which affirmed that
the right assumed by the Upper House to amend or reject Bills
sent up by the Lower must be so restricted as to secure that the
will of the Commons should prevail before the life of the Parlia
ment had expired. After animated debates which occupied three
sittings the motion was carried amid loud applause by 432 to 147
votes that is to say, by a majority of 285. English Nonconfor
mists and Irish Catholics at enmity for the past eighteen months
made a united front against the common enemy. But it was
nothing more than a declaration of principle. When would the
Government attempt to apply it? When would it dare to give
battle?
A
final attempt was made in 1908 to solve this question of reli
gious teaching in primary schools a permanent sore of English

politics. During the closing months of 1907 the President of the
Board of Education had promised a simple and short Bill. But
the Bill whose principles he explained to the House of Commons
on February 24, 1908, was in fact as complicated as its predecessor
of 1906. The first clause laid down that there should be only one
category of public elementary school, in which the teachers
should not be subject to any religious test and the only type of
religious instruction permitted would be the simple Bible teach
ing given in all or almost all board schools since 1870. As was
pointed out in the debate which followed, this provision marked
a greater departure from secularism than the Act of 1870, for the
speech and MacKcnna s explanations

1
H. of C., ii 1907, Arthur Balfour s
Jul^
(Parliamentary. Detibtes, 4th Scries, vol. cbcxviii, pp. 67 sqq.). H. of L., July 25, 1907, Lord
Londonderry s
speech and Lord Crewe s
reply (ibid., vol. cbocix, pp. 17 sqq.).
71
elementary schools lost the

right, which they had hitherto pos
1
sessed, to give no religious instruction. The continued existence
of die free schools was recognized and they could even be assisted
by grants from the central government on a scale more liberal
than before 1907, but -only if
they did not possess die monopoly
of teaching in a particularlocality, ^that
is to
say if the parish, to
use the current phraseology, was not a single school parish, if the
number of pupils was not less than twenty, and the standard of
such a school both hygienic and educational should be certified
by an inspector as not inferior to that of the provided schools
supported by the rates. When free schools were transferred to the
public authority, denominational teaching would still be permis

sible
provided it was not given by the teacher and was given out
of school hours or on a Sunday or holiday.
Faced with this new Bill the Anglican episcopate was not con
tent with a mere non
possumus. On March 30 the Bishop of Saint-
Asaph introduced an alternative Bill in the House of Lords, in
spired on certain points by the advice given at the end of 1906 by

the Archbishop of Canterbury. It was a
compromise based on
mutual concessions. "While recognizing that the Nonconformists
had a legitimate grievance in the country districts, it asked them
to recognize in their turn die legitimacy of the
Anglican counter
claim in the urban areas where the former board schools, the
provided schools of 1902, were in a majority. There would, there

fore, be only one category of school in which the teachers would
be free to give or not to give the religious instruction, and the
normal religious instruction would be undenominational, but on
three days a week those children whose
parents desired it might
receive denominational instruction
provided it was not at the
public expense. Whereas the Bill of 1906 might be regarded as
an attempt to unite Nonconformists and Catholics against Angli
canism, a compromise was now proposed between Nonconfor
mists and Anglicans from whose benefit the Catholics would be
excluded. Lengthy negotiations were carried on throughout
the spring andsummer. Campbell-Bannerman had been dead for
several months and MacKenna had been
replaced at the Board of
Education by Runciman when die latter began an official corre
spondence with the Archbishop of Canterbury with the object
of drafting a Bill acceptable both to the Liberal in the majority
1
Graham Walks: Letter to the Manchester Guardian, November 1, 1908.
72
House of Commons and to the House of Lords. In its amended
form the Bill was made public on November 20. To ensure its
success a settlement committee was formed at the request of the
Archbishop of Canterbury which was immediately joined by

seven bishops and several leading Nonconformists. But when the
Representative Church Council met on December 3 the bishops
were faced with the opposition of their own laity.
The motive which had brought together the Archbishop of
Canterbury, the Bishop of London, the Wesleyan, Scott Lidgett,
and the Congregationalist, Sylvester Home, was fear lest Parlia
ment, weary of their disputes, might cut the knot by secularizing
the provided schools. The stalwarts of the Anglican Church, the
followers of Lord Halifax and the Cecils, were not so timid, and
with good reason. They perceived that in exchange for the right
of admission given to Anglican clergymen in the provided
schools, they would sacrifice the hitherto possessed by
monopoly
the parsons in the rural areas. When
a motion opposing the Bill
was submitted to the Council, only three bishops out of twenty-
one supported it, but it was carried nevertheless by 189 to 99 votes.
The Bill was therefore dropped by the Government amid univer
sal indifference.
1
No
one wanted to hear anything more of this
dispute between $ie Church and the sects about religious
educa
tion in the schools.
This abandonment by the Radical party of its educational pro

gramme will not surprise our readers if they recall what we said in
our last volume of the decline of Nonconformity in England at
the close of the nineteenth century. The shock given by the Edu-
1
Though the public cared nothing, the small group for whom the question had a special
interest continued to discuss See Athelstan Riley, Michael Sadler, Cyril Jackson, The
it.
Religious Question in Public Education : A Critical Examination Scheme Representing Various

Points of View, 1911. In most districts an agreement would seem to have been reached to
recommend to the teachers a syllabus ofreligious teaching which, though undogmatic, and
from one point of view for that reason, was less biblical and therefore more remote from
the traditional Nonconformist creed and more acceptable to Anglicans. For this move
ment, which we cannot study in detail here, see Sir G. Croydon Mark s speech in the
House of Commons, March 8, 1912 (Parliamentary Debates, Commons, 5th Series, vol.
Place ofReligious Teaching in a National System
xxxv, pp. 692 sqq.) also A. J. Mundella, The
;
the Education Settlement Committee,

of Public Schools: Hard Facts for Legislators ; Address to
Ed. 1, 1924* the
July II, 1912; The Cambridgeshire Syllabus of Religious Teaching for Schools,
prototype of the new type of syllabus. For the spread of the new
methods see Religious
Instruction in Provided Schools in England and Wales, 4th Edition (revised), November 1931.
73
cation Act of 1902, the violent reaction of the sects, the passive
resistance movement and the victory at the polls in January 1906,
may well have fostered among the Nonconformists the illusion

that the progressive decline of their sects had been checked and
the Anglican Church would pay the penalty for presuming on
their weakness. In support of this belief they could still
appeal to
many healthy signs. The Welsh revival* was one. Another was
the new movement organized among the Wesleyans by Hugh
Price Hughes, which sought to regain contact with the masses by
founding missions in the suburbs of the large towns. Moreover,

the Wesleyans had a subscription on a large scale to pur
opened
chase a property in the heart of London next door to the Anglican
Westminster Abbey and the Catholic Westminster Cathedral, on
which to install their administrative and religious headquarters.
Finally, at Selly Oak, near Birmingham, the Quakers had founded
their admirable institution for free theological teaching, training
for missions and
foreign peace propaganda. But the final, and to
all seeming irremediable, defeat of the agitation against the
Education Act, in spite of the powerful Nonconformist represen
tation in Parliament, was a bad symptom, so bad that it seemed
to outweigh all the favourable symptoms. And it was not the
only one.
In the first
place, there was the decline which we have remarked
already, but which continued to make progress, of those fissiparous
tendencies which constitute the very essence of what the English
call Congregationalism and distinguish the English sects from the
Protestants of the Continent. This Congregationalism had enabled
the sects to develop by multiplying independent groups, by divi
sion and schism rather than by organization. Now, however, the
Roman principle of unity began to attract these religious anar
chists. The
Baptists furnished themselves with superintendents, a
term borrowed from the Wesleyan body, the Congregationalists
with moderators, who were nothing less than a species of bishops
exempt from the control of the independent groups. And the
same tendency manifested itself in the appointment of special
ministers to administer the large funds collected from Baptist
and Congregational subscribers to maintain the central organiza
tion,support the pastors and provide retiring pensions for them.
Besides this movement towards a more unified organization with
in the individual sects, there was a movement towards reunion
between the sects themselves. Among the Methodists the scheme
sponsored by Hugh Hughes for a general reunion of their

Price
branches had indeed failed, for the moment at least. But the union
of three sects, the United Methodist Free Churches, the Methodist
New Connexion and the Bible Christians, sanctioned in 1907 by
a Statute, constituted a preliminary success for the advocates of
Methodist Union 1 In Scotland the same tendency was displayed
.
by the reunion of the two great branches of free Presbyterianism

the Free Church of Scotland and the United Free Church. It
was effected in 1900.Though faced in 1904 with an adverse deci
sion of the courts to which a dissident minority of the United
Free Church had appealed, the union finally triumphed
over
these difficulties, and a movement was already taking shape for a
reunion with the Established Church itself.
The sects, as we
should expect, interpreted this movement to
wards unity as a sign of life. That it was in reality the reverse is
proved by the annual statistics of the Free Churches. In the closing
years of the last century their numbers had grown very slowly, a}l
out of proportion to the rapid growth of the population. Even
this slow increase had now ceased. After the temporary stimulus
caused by the Welsh revival, every year witnessed a constant
decline in the number of those who communicated, in other
words, regularly attended the services of the Free Churches. From
1906 to 1907 there was a decrease of 27,000 communicants, from
1907 to 1908 a decrease of 6,000, from 1908 to 1909 a decrease of
7,000 and from 1909 to 1910 a decrease of 24,000. While honestly
publishing these disconcerting figures, whose effect
was doubly
disastrous at a moment when they were being defeated by the
Anglicans on the education question, the Nonconformists attemp

ted to dispute their significance. The fact, they argued, that their
1
An Act to authorize the union of the Methodist New Connexion, the Bible Christians
and the United Methodist Free Churches under the name of The United Methodist
Church to deal with real and personal property belonging to the said Churches or
,
denominations, to provide for the vesting of the said property in trust for the United
Church so formed and for the assimilation of the trust thereof and for other purposes
there were now
(United Methodist Chwch Act). There had Been seven Methodist Churches,
only five. The new group which took the name of United Methodist
Church with 88,801
communicants (increased in 1908 to 164,071) ranked fourth after the Wesleyans with
628,693 communicants, the Primitive Methodists with 203,128, and the Calvinistic
Metho
dists with 189,164. Apart from these four powerful Methodist Churches with a total com
municant membership exceeding 1,000,000, there remained only two tiny groups, the
Union with
Independent Methodists with 9,754 communicants and the Wesleyan Reform
8,689. It is obvious how much easier reunion had now become. Yet it was not
complete
effected until 1929.
75
figures were computed on a stringent basis, far more stringent

than the Anglican statistics, placed them at a disadvantage. Among
the Wesleyans or Baptists, to be classed as a communicant it was
not communicate once a year, at Easter, as in the
sufficient to
1
Anglican body. But this had always been the case, and on what
ever basis, lax or stringent, the figures were calculated, the decrease
in Nonconformist membership remained an incontestable fact.
The Nonconformists also pointed out that their Churches were

becoming steadily more wealthy, that a subscription organized
by the Baptists in the opening year of the century had produced

.250,000, a Wesleyan subscription a little later ^100,000, and
that the Nonconformist Churches were spending on their Sunday
Schools and social activities of every description more than they
2
had ever But this fact, when taken in combination with
spent.
the decline in the number of members, proves that the Free
Churches had become richer only because they had become more
middle-class, suggests that the public spirit which impelled all
these wealthy men to subscribe so liberally should not be confused
with profound and in any case makes it
religious conviction,
plain that the Free Churches were not only out of touch with the
labouring masses among whom a century and a half before the
new-born Wesleyan movement had won such amazing victories,
but were losing the allegiance of the classes which till lately had
given it. More chapels are being built/ we read in the Free
Church Year Book for 1911, and more churches too The
Churches are vying with each other to attract worshippers;
music, lecture programmes, comfortable seats, and, generally
speaking, well-prepared sermons, beckon the people in, but
do they come? We
are again face to face with the old tragedy,
the tragedy of our work the masses of the people, all
immortal souls, are not touched. It used to be the fashion to
make this lament, as relating to the working classes; the truth
is and we must face its startling reality the educated middle-
class, especially the young people, are losing touch altogether
withxhe House of God/ 3
1
Free Church Year Book, 1913, p. 289.
a
Letter from Dr, Clifford to The Times. The Times, May 6, 1913.
8
Free Church Year Book, 1911, p. 290. Cf. Free Church Year Book, 1910,
p. 270: It will
be seen that the Evangelical Free Churches now 8,662,691
provide an increase of
sittings,
more than 100,000 over last year s figures, without reckoning the unclassified; while there
is a decrease of nearly 7,000 in the number of communicants.
76
Was the ground lost by the sects won by the Church of

England? For a moment itwould seem Anglicans were disposed
to cherish this pleasing belief. Their victory on the education
and statistics confirmed it. For
question encouraged optimism,
some years the number of Anglicans continued to increase, while
the Nonconformist communicants decreased. But in the first
place,
the increase was extremely slow, very far from keeping
pace with the growth of population. And it was

soon followed
by a fairly rapid decrease, whereas the decrease in Nonconformist
membership tended rather to slacken. Moreover, the Established
Church was stillfaced with a shortage of clergy. And it was
threatened by a danger far more serious than the competition of
the sects, namely that revival of Catholicism, Anglican and
Roman, whose progress we have already had occasion to relate.
A Royal Commission, appointed in 1904 to inquire into the
1 con
growth of ritualism, reported that the serious nature of the
flict was the impotence of the bishops to prevent all these ritual
innovations which were in effect repudiations of Protestantism,

and that the only way in which their authority might perhaps be
strengthened was to legalize, if necessary by
an express statute, a
host of practices which the rigid Protestantism of half a century
before would have regarded as intolerable. But at what point was
the limits of this legal toleration? Alone among
it
possible to fix
the Churches throughout the world the Church of England pre
sented the paradox of an episcopal Church whose bishops tradi
coerce. Moreover, not satisfied with the
tionally lacked power to
toleration they enjoyed, certain Anglo-Catholic clergymen had
themselves ordained priests and the public witnessed with increas
conversions to Roman Catholicism. A cousin of
2
ing equanimity
A of breaches or
Royal Commission appointed to inquire into the alleged prevalence
1
Service for the Churches of England,

neglect of the Law relating to the conduct of Divine
and to the ornament and fitting of Churches; and to consider the existing powers and pro
cedure applicable to such irregularities and to make -such recommendations as may be
deemed requisite for dealing with the aforesaid matters, April 23, 1904.
*
For the movement towards Catholicism see two interesting compilations. Roads to
compiled and edited by J. Godfrey Raupert, Edition _

accounts of converts who give the reasons for their conversion. Also Converts to Rome: A
list of the more notable converts to the Catholic Church in the
United Kingdom during
biographical
77
theKing was converted to marry the King of Spain. A Eucharistic
Congress was held in London, and although yielding to protests
the Government refused to allow a public procession of the
Blessed Sacrament, a large Catholic procession nevertheless took
place in the London streets in the neighbourhood of Westminster
It was known that
Cathedral. King Edward had asked to be
released from the obligation of declaring the worship of the
1
Virgin and the sacrifice of the Mass superstitious and idolatrous ,
and though the Parliament of 1906 could not find time to deal
with the question, it would shortly be settled to the satisfaction of
the Catholics. 2 How unreal the battle between the Church and
the Sects must have been when the only question which seriously
fluttered the ecclesiastical dovecots was the battle in the Church
of England between the Evangelicals and the Liberals on the one
hand, and the Anglo-Catholics on die other, or rather, since with
in the Church the Anglo-Catholic victory was well in sight, if
indeed it had not already been won, the battle between the entire
church, including the Anglo-Catholics and Roman Catholicism.
Protestantism was on the decline. Hilaire Belloc and Chesterton
were doing their utmost to bring it into ridicule while rehabili- .
tating Catholicism and it was a sign of the times that in popular

drama the Catholic priest was no longer the traitor, the Jesuit
unmasked at the close by the combined efforts of honest folk.
Now the playwright very often made him the providential in
strument of dramatic justice. In the world of affairs, the Jewish
financier bent on luxury and display was replacing the Puritan
man of business who toiled conscientiously to acquire wealth as
though fulfilling a stern duty. Throughout the great mass of the
population, more indulgent than formerly to Catholicism, but
more remote than ever from conversion, there prevailed an in
creasing hostility to asceticism or religious pessimism of any kind.
That Catholicism left man the hope of purgatory was put to its
credit, but it was blamed for leaving him exposed to the fear of
compiled and edited by

the last sixty years, W.
Gordon Gorman, new and enlarged edition,
1910. This isthe tenth edition, containing 6,700 names. The first, which bore the title
Rome s Rccntits, was published in 1876. This Hst , the author explains, *is in no way a
numbering of the people, but a record of a spiritual change among the intellectual classes
of these islands* (p. 10). And again: *It will be found by a cursory inspection of the list that
there is hardly an English noble family that has not given one or more of its members to
the Roman Catholic Church
(p. l).
1
Sidney Lee, King Edward VIL .
Sir Vol.
. .
pp. 22 sqq.
ii>
a
10 Edw. 7 and I Geo. V, Cap. 29: An Act to alter the form of the Declaration
required
to be made by the Sovereign on Accession (Accession Declaration Act,
1910),
78
Religion was expected to foster a humanitarian optimism,

.ell.
o offer thehuman race and even the individual a guarantee of

1
tealth and happiness on earth. H. G. Wells and Bernard Shaw,
vhose readers were ten or rather a hundred times more numerous
han those of Belloc and Chesterton, professed a sort of religion
progress which borrowing ideas
;>f
from Bergson s Evolution
Crtatrice and confining itself strictly to the sensible universe,
attempted a spiritual interpretation of

evolution. Powerful cur
rents from the warm countries of the south, Jewish, Catholic, but
above all pagan, were battering and crumbling the wavebeaten
cliff of Nordic Protestantism.
From all this it is clear that the Nonconformist campaign
against the Education
Act was defeated far more by the general
resistance of the Anglicans. And this
apathy than by the obstinate
apathy was nowhere more profound than in the Government

departments. We must not imagine that the
Education Bills suc
cessively introduced the Ministry only to be defeated by
by
the Lords or dropped in the Commons were the work of the
Board of Education, resentful that its freedom of action had been
hampered since 1902 by Anglican interference. In fact, the Educa
tion Act of 1902 had been drafted under the aegis of Sir Robert
Morant, who was still the autocrat of the Board and whose des
be driven from
potism would continue until 1911 when he would
2
his throne by a revolt of the Union of Teachers. Others less
kindly disposed towards the Church of England were quick to
Board derived from the concordat of
perceive the advantages the
1902. So far as secondary education was concerned, these were in-
See, for example, Margaret Ethel MacDonakTs quaint criticism of a friend who lived
1
a life of remarkable self-sacrifice and had no religious faith: . . . I should imagine, if

Christ s teaching is true, or if there is anything divine in our moral sense and in human
love and self-sacrifice, that life is more acceptable to God than that of the majority
"s
of orthodox religious people of whatever sect. Only I think if she believed in God she would1
take more care of herself, she is rather weary of life and does not trouble to take properfood and rest.
(Quoted by J. R. MacDonald, Margaret Ethel MacDonald, p. 70).

the practice of choosing
episode of the Holmes circular which condemned
* For the
schools and
elementary school inspectors too exclusively from the pupils of elementary
thus arousing the formidable antagonism of all the teachers, see F. H. Hayward, Educa
tional Administration and Criticism A Sequel to the Holmes Circular, with a preface by John
:
Adams, 1912. Also H. of C, April 4, July 13, 1911 (Parliamentary Debates, Commons 1911,
5th Series, vol. xxiii, pp. 2155 sqq.; vol. xxviii, pp. 434 sqq.). We have
a new Minister of
Education, supported, we have no doubt, by a new permanent secretary. Sir Robert
Morant, who has been so long the* dominant figure of the Board, watching Minister after
Minister flit before him like shadows in the cave, has passed on to another task, taking
with him, we believe, the thanks of many friends of educational progress and perhaps
hearing, as he goes, a sigh of relief from those who found his hand too heavy* (Times
Educational Supp lement, January 2, 1912).
VOL VI- 5 79
disputable. The grammar schools in which the

old independent
influence of the Anglican Church was predominant had been
swept away, to be replaced by new schools where the authority
of the Church was reduced to a minimum, if not completely des
troyed. Midway between elementary and secondary
education the
rapidly multiplying technical schools,

and classes for adults, had
literally no place
for religion in their curricula. And even in the
domain of elementary education the Act of 1902, which had been
so widely regarded as the salvation of the denominational schools,
turned out as time went, to be less favourable to the Church than
had been originally believed. The right possessed by the Board
of Education to inspect the denominational schools, who now re
ceived their share of the rates on the same footing as the undeno
minational, provided a thousand pretexts, if the Board wished, for
making their existence hard. Moreover, these schools were usually
village schools. As. the depopulation
of the country districts
proceeded the number of children attending them diminished.

Some had even to be closed. On
the contrary, in the crowded
urban centres, which were steadily growing, the new schools
opened belonged to the category of the old board schools. An

increase was therefore soon witnessed in the number of children
attending the provided schools, a decrease in the number attend

ing the non-provided, and the Church of England suffered under
1
the system as under the old. The change to be dreaded was
new
a compromise of the kind arranged in 1908 between certain
Anglican bishops and Nonconformist leaders, by which the par

sons would lose their monopoly of the village school in return for
the right of entry into all schools without exception. This, how
ever, was just what the teachers in the public elementary schools
would not brook. They were willing to submit to the obligation
of giving their pupils every day a perfunctory religious lesson, if
at that price they could prevent intruders invading premises they
regarded as their exclusive domain. Thus the status quo found an

increasing number of defenders, not only among those who took
no interest in education but among those who, precisely because
1
When the Bill of 1902 was passed 2,000,000 children were being educated in the board
schools, 2,000,000 in the voluntary schools. (For the figures in 1895 see my History of the
English People, vol. v, p. 165.) In 1913-14, 3,313,488 children were attending the provided
schools as against 2,069,136 attending the non-provided (Board of Education, Statistics of
Public Education in England and Wales. Educational Statistics. 1913-14, p. 271). In 1930 the
figures were respectively 4,049,263 and 1,943,893 (Education in i930. Being the report of the
Board ofEducation and the Statistics of Public Education for England and Wales, 1931, p. 113).
80
they were enthusiastic educationalists, were disgusted with these

ecclesiastical bickerings. Loud as was the din of the combat, after
allcompletely barren, which during the years that followed the
election of January 1906 raged between Anglicans, Catholics,
and Nonconformists, it was matched by the silence which enve
loped the extensive work of reform accomplished by the joint
labours of Parliament and the Board of Education.
When the Liberal Cabinet on the morrow of its advent to
power was confronted with the many questions connected with

public education, it was not content with attempting to satisfy the
Nonconformists. When Birrell introduced his Bill he expressed
problem of religious instruction occupied public
his regret that the
attention so exclusively to the neglect of other and more impor
tant educational problems. In addition to a number of provisions
dealing with endowments, his Bill contained a clause which em

powered the County Councils to devolve a portion of their
educational functions to subordinate bodies functioning over a
more limited area, thus effecting a species of decentralization
which would amount to a partial return to the system of school
boards. The Bill was also accompanied by a further Bill consoli
dating all
previous Education Bills including die new Bill of 1906
if it were passed. Officials of the Board of Education would no
longer be in danger of losing their way in a maze of enactments,
some of them three-quarters of a century old. They would have
to apply only a single comprehensive Statute. Of all these ambi
tious projects not one survived the defeat of Bin-ell s Bill. But we
have already seen how after 1907 partly by administrative regula
tions, in part also by legislation, the Government contrived to
effect a seriesof partial reprisals. And these reprisals were not
solely concerned with the everlasting battle over denominational
teaching in the schools. In the purely secular sphere they did much
to render the elementary schools more efficient, the secondary
schools more democratic.
To take first the improvements effected in elementary educa
Already in this year 1906, otherwise so barren, the Govern

tion.
ment carried an act authorizing the Scottish school boards to pro-
81
vide for the education and conveyance to school of epileptic and
1
crippled children. Another Act which attracted more attention
empowered the English education authorities to provide meals
for children attending the schools. If it were
proved that their
under-nourishment was due to their parents poverty, the meals
2
might be given at the cost of the school. In 1907 an important
measure of administrative reorganization was passed, 3 an Act,
observed the annual report of the Board, which, though it attrac
ted but little
public attention, may without exaggeration be de
scribed as an event of the first educational importance 4 It gave .
the local educational authorities extended for raising

facilities
loans and purchasing land. It proceeded to impose upon them the
obligation of arranging for the medical inspection of the children,
authorized them to set up holiday schools and play centres, and
for the first time gave them unrestricted powers to make what
ever provision was necessary for the education of deaf, deaf and
dumb, and blind children. 6 In 1908 a novel experiment was under
taken, a first step towards a compulsory post-elementary educa
tion such as had lately been introduced in Germany. A Statute
authorized the local Scottish authorities the measure was tem
porarily confined to Scotland to enact for their respective dis
tricts by-laws
making attendance at school obligatory up to an
age not exceeding seventeen. What results would these statutes
6
1 6 Edw.
7, Cap. 10: An Act to provide for the Education and Conveyance to School of
Epileptic and Crippled and Defective Children. (Education of Defective Children [Scotland]
Act, 1906.)
* 6 Edw.
7, Cap. 57: An Act to make provision for Meals for Children attending Public
Elementary Schools in England and Wales. (Education [Provision of Meals] Act, 1906.)
8
7 Edw. 7, Cap. 43 : An Act to make provision for the better administration by the
Central and Local Authorities in England and Wales of the enactments relating to Educa
tion. (Education [Administrative Provisions] Act, 1907.)
4
Report of the Board of Education for the Year 1906-7, 1907, p. 8.
5
Before a special school for blind or deaf and dumb children could be sanctioned the
Statute of 1893 56 arid 57 Viet., Cap. 42: (Elementary Education [Blind and Deaf Children]
Act, 1893) required that at least a third of the cost should be provided by private subscrip
tion. The stipulation was abolished in 1907.
*
8 Edw. 7, Cap. 63 An Act to amend the laws relating to England and Scotland and for
:
other purposes connected therewith (Education [Scotland] Act, 1908). For the problem of
post-elementary education which the Education Bill of 1919 finally attempted without
success to render compulsory in England see my article on La Nouvelle hi Scolaire
anglaise
(Revue de Paris, October 1, 1919; 26th annle, vol. v, pp. 596 sqq.). To complete this account
of the educational legislation during the years following 1907 we must also mention 8
Edw. 7, Cap. 67: An Act to consolidate and amend the Law relating to the Protection of
Children, and Young Persons, Reformatory and Industrial Schools, and Juvenile Offenders
and otherwise to amend the Law with respect to Children and
Young Persons (Children
Act, 1908): Part IV, Reformatory and Industrial Schools. 9 Edw. 7, Cap. 13: An Act to
provide for the recovery by Local Education Authorities of Costs for Medical Treatment
of Children attending Elementary Schools in England and Wales Education Authori-
(Local
82
IRELAND, EDUCATION AND LABOUR
produce ? And in so far as they were permissive what employment

would make of them? In any case,
the local authorities the Liberal
Government had opened up the way.
The provision of education for those above the age for leaving
school has taken us beyond the boundary of elementary education.
This is equally true of the so-called higher elementary education
which the Code of 1905 empowered the local authorities to pro
vide and of which the central schools founded in London and
Manchester would present excellent models. 1 It is true also of the
permission .given to the local authorities by the administrative
Statute of 1907 to provide scholarships for pupils of public elemen
tary schools from the age of twelve up to the limit of age fixed
for the provision of instruction in a public elementary school by
sub-section 2 of section 22 of the 1902 Act*. But although in these
three instances the standard of elementary education, as hitherto
understood by the public, was outstepped, the education these
various provisions envisaged was nevertheless treated by the
Government as something which came within the competence of
the officials in charge of elementary education, not of those con
cerned with secondary. In other words, their authors consistently
regarded the distinction between elementary and secondary educa
tion as one not of age but of class. There was an elementary educa
tion which you might carry as far as possible, but which remained
throughout a preparation for manual labour. And there was a
secondary education begun as soon as possible by the children of
the middle-class which prepared them for all those professions
which were the reserve of the ruling class. Would the Liberal
Government continue to maintain this point of view? Suddenly
they made it known that they would not, but intended to develop
the principle contained in germ, though only in germ, intheEduca-
ties[Medical Treatment) Act, 1909). 10 Edw. 7 and I Geo. 5, Cap. 37: An Act to enable
certain Local Education Authorities to give boys and girls information, advice and assist
ance with respect to the choice of employment (Education [Choice of Employment] Act,
1910).
1 For the foundation and first
beginnings of these schools see the excellent article entitled
Central Schools. A
London and Manchester Experiment* in the first number of The Times
Educational Supplement, September 6, 1910, p. 5.
83
tion Act of 1902 by making secondary education de îocratic.
The report of the Board of Education published at the end of
1906, after announcing that the suî provided in the budget for
the development of secondary eduqôn had been increased and
that the Government was engagedin naming the necessary regu
lations for its
allocation, explained the principle on which it would
proceed. Education is one. ... It
ought to be continuously pro
gressive from the time when a child first
passes beyond the home
and goes to school up to the time when school life ceases, when
the boy or girl ceases to be under educational tutelage, has been
taught how to learn for himself or herself. In an ideal common
wealth, this
process would be complete for the whole youth of
the nation. This is a high ideal, and how far removed it is from
existing facts, or from any state of facts which can be contem

plated, as soon to be possible, is at once obvious. But short of it
there is no finality : and the higher the aim is fixed, the higher the
1
attainment is
likely to be.
There was no intention of complying with the demand of the
youthful Labour party and making secondary education free
straightaway. For that the time was clearly not ripe. Only four
years had passed since the Act of 1902 had made it possible to
organize in Great Britain a system of public secondary education,
and only two since the Board of Education had created a body of
inspectors to control the standard of education given in those
secondary schools which sought Government grants. But in 1907
the budgetary provision for secondary education was further in
creased and the regulations distinguished between two categories
of secondary school which would receive respectively a higher or
a lower grant. To receive the higher, five
pounds a year for every
pupil, two conditions which we have already mentioned must be
fulfilled: the board of managers must contain a majority of repre
sentatives of the local authority, and no religious test must be
imposed on teachers or pupils. But a further condition was im
posed subject to certain exceptions laid down by the regulation
that at least a quarter of the places should be free, reserved for
pupils from elementary schools who passed the examination for a

scholarship. And those schools in which the proportion of scholar-
2
1
Report of the Board ofEducationfor the Year 1905-6, 1906, p. 61.
2
H; of C., May 15, 1907, R. MacKenna s speech (Parliamentary Debates, 4th Series, vol.
clxxiv, p. 1054).
84
ships u^ght be less than a quarter of the places were exceedingly

few. In a much larger number of schools it was higher, sometimes
30 or 40 per cent or even mo fe. 1 On this point however the figures
are not easy to interpret. P
Va before 1902 the county and borough
councils had begun to grant scholarships more liberally. After as
before 1902 we must take into account, besides the children in
receipt of these scholarships, those who received scholarships from
private foundations; and in addition to those who came up from
the elementary schools with a scholarship, there were children
who came up without one. But the extent of the effort made by
the public authorities to provide a bridge between the elementary
and the secondary school will be evident when we reflect that in
1900 scholarships of .80,000 were granted to some
at a total cost
of more than ^400,ooo. 3
5,500 children, in 191 1 to 38,000 at a cost
The new system involved its special problems. Should the stan
dard of entrance examination qualifying a boy or girl for a
the"
scholarship be so high that only exceptionally gifted children went

on to the secondary school, children whose abilities merited a
place among their wealthier companions ? In that case, the propor

tion of a quarter would be out of the question and the object in
view, to open secon4ary education to the lower classes, would
not be achieved. Or should it merely ensure that the standard of
the children in receipt of free places should not be lower than that
of the paying pupils? The proportion of a quarter would be
speedily and enormously exceeded. And would this host of new
comers prove industrious and keen workers ? Or would they drop
out at various stages, whatever undertakings might have been
given, before the five years course of study was completed? And
even before they proved laggards would not their presence pro-
1
To insist all at once upon so large a proportion as 25 per cent "free
places",
ex-
hypothesi boys and from working-class parents ... is under present conditions **a
girls
large order," especially when, owing to a peculiar administrative interpretation by the
Board of its own regulation, the number at a given moment in a new and rapidly growing
school might be nearer 40 per cent and actually docs in many schools reach 30 per cent
(Times Educational Stipplement, September 6, 1910; "The New Secondary Education. Some
Dangers Ahead ), In the year 1908-9, in the seven schools for which the Durham County
Council was the responsible authority, the percentage required by the Board was 25 in
each case but the percentage actually given in the case of one school was 67,in 1907-8 and
39 in 1909-10; in another 46 in 1909-10 and 45 in 1910-11; and in a third 51 in 1910-11
(Report of the Board of Education for the Year 1909-10> 1911, p. 70).
a
Of which it is true, as a critic points out, more than half were provided by the London
County Council and more than half the remainder by a small number of large towns
(S. J. G. Hoare, The Schools and Social Reform, 1914, p. 3 3). It was indeed the London County
Council which inaugurated this lavish distribution of scholarships, a policy due surely to
the influence of Sidney Webb,
85
voke an exodus of the paying pupils? Would not the intellectual

as well as the social standard of these secondary schools be lowered
in consequence? These were difficult.
problems. But their diffi
culty did not daunt either the Liberal Ministers or the experts at
the Board of Education. 1
To connect elementary with secondary
education was the outstanding achievement of the Government
during these years. But we must not forget that they made use of the
instrument which, when they drew up the Act of 1902, the Conser
vatives
intentionally or unintentionally had placed in their hands.
10
But if
secondary education were brought within the reach of
the working class would education have been rendered com
pletely democratic? When

a child of middle-class
parentage had
finished his secondary education about the
age ot seventeen his
parents did not usually regard-his education as complete, but sent
him to the University for three or four
years. Must this higher
education remain permanently the privilege of the middle- and
upper-class minority? Could nothing be done to bring its benefits

within reach of the proletariat? Two experiments had been made
in this direction without any assistance from die State
during the
years immediately preceding the advent of the Liberals to power.
The first of these was the foundation at Oxford of Ruskin
College.
2
An American philanthropist provided die original
funds in 1899. His intention was to found at Oxford, but this time
for die benefit of the
working class, an institution similar to the
halls which had
grown up round the new universities of London
and Manchester to make it possible for poor students to live more
cheaply because they lived together and assisted each other in their
studies.Ruskin College was therefore called at first Ruskin Hall.
But it was also a college because the Ruskin students, prevented
,
by mixed feelings of pride and shyness from attending the Univer

sity and College lectures, were determined to have their own
i
1
For these educational and social problems and others not discussed here connected
with the provision of secondary education, see the excellent Report of the Board of Education
or the Year 1906-i9Q7,
pp. 8 sqq,
*
For Ruskin College sec Henry Sanderson Furniss (Lord Sanderson), Memories of Sixty
Years, 1931, pp. 82 sqq.; also an interesting article entitled A College for Workmen in
he Speaker for February 24, 1906.
86
teachers to teach them political science, political economy, ana
economic history. There were between thirty and fifty students,
doing their own
closely packed in an unpretentious building,
housekeeping and, at first, their own cooking. Endless discussions
conducted in an atmosphere thick with the smoke of
pipes fol
lowed each lecture. There was one long term lasting forty-eight
weeks, the only vacation being four weeks at Christmas, though
the students were allowed to devote the week-ends to Labour
propaganda in any locality they might choose. Correspondence

courses which reached some 6,000 workmen throughout the
country enabled the governing body of the college not only to
bring its influence to bear upon a host of very young men for
whom there was no room within its walls many of them indeed
too young for admission but also to discover
among this large
body the elite who later on would be chosen as actual students.
This governing body was composed in part of members of the
University of Socialist sympathies, such as Professor
York Powell,
Sidney Ball, and the Rev. A. J. Carlyle, in part of trade-union
secretaries such as Barnes and Bowerman, whose task it was to see
that the new institution was not, like the University Extension
Movement, annexed by the middle class. If, however, the Prin
cipal, Dennis Hird, an eccentric ex-clergyman who had been

deprived of his living for writing a book in praise of polygamy,
claimed to teach the complete Socialist creed, many of the
tutors thought it their duty to inculcate in their
simple audience
a salutary scepticism and weaken their faith in revolutionary
dogma. This produced considerable friction. But the predominant
influence was that of the trade-union officials, who were
neither Marxian nor anti-Marxian, but, dispensing with theories
of any kind, were content to defend the corporate inter
ests of their class. It was they who provided the
greater part of the
funds, not only the annual payment of .52 to every student for
his support but whatever further sum was
required to meet the
expenses of the college. And they sent up to Oxford young men
of twenty-eight to thirty who jfor five or six years had proved
themselves good workers in the cause of the unions, to learn
English purer than their local dialect and the phraseology of
politics and political economy so that when they went back to
their unions they would be able to furnish the working class in
the urban and county councils, and eventually in the House of
87
Commons with all the leaders it required, so that it could
itself,
dispense entirely with middle-class interference.

The second experiment was the foundation of the Workers
Educational Association. 1 Like Ruskin College, the movement
was intended by its founder, Albert Mansbridge, a Lancashire co-
operator, to renew the attempt made thirty years
earlier by the
University Extension Movement, which had in a sense been too

successful, since its very success had made it turn its back on its
proletarian origins and become a purely
middle-class institution.
He sought to inaugurate on novel fines a movement for the higher
education of the working class by effecting an alliance between
the University Extension Movement, on the one hand, and the
co-operators and the trade unions on the other. The project,
brought for the first time in 1899 without much success before
the University Extension Summer School, was revived in 1902
immediately after the Boer War. At the end of 1905 the Associa
tion possessed branches in eight towns and district committees
throughout the north-west and south-west of England. And in

November, a few days before the resignation of the Cabinet, Sir
William Anson, President of the Board of Education, with Sir
Robert Morant at his side, received a working-class deputation
introduced by Will Crooks which asked for financial help from
the Board. For the moment nothing was done; the matter was
simply referred for examination to the Advisory Committee. But
when the Workers Education Conference held its annual meeting
at Oxford on August 10, 1907, Morant attended.
The subject of discussion was What Oxford can do for the
people A young Scotch workman from the Clyde dockyards,
.
S.R. Mactavish, voiced, in language almost threatening, the atti

tude of the working class I have not come here as a suppliant.
:
... I refuse to sit down at the rich man s door and beg for crusts.
... I demand for my class all the advantages thatOxford has it in
her power to offer,, and I claim it as a right of which we have been
unjustly deprived unjustly for us and for Oxford too.
. . . For,
remember, democracy will be achieved with or without the assis-
1
For the Workers* Educational Association and the Tutorial Classes, see Albert Mans
bridge, An Adventure Working Class Education: Being the Story of the W.E.A. 1903-1915,
in
1915; also University Tutorial Classes: A Study in the Development of Higher Education among
Working Men and Women, 1913. The Workers Educational Association is mentioned in
the Report, of the Board of Education for the year 1906-7, p. 91; and the Tutorial Classes in
the report for the year 1910-11, p. 79.
88
tance of Oxford; but if the University of Oxford continues to
hold herself aloof from the working classes, then we shall end by
thinking of her, not for what she is, but for what she has been/
And he found fault with the too conservative spirit in which the
University Extension taught political economy and history.
In point of fact, he declared in conclusion, workmen s sons
come to Oxford
to escape their class, not to relieve it. ... We
want her in future to inspire them, not with the desire of succeed
ing, but with that of serving society we have need of you. But
you have need of us/
Such language alarmed a portion of his audience, but only a
minority. The real enemies of the new organization were the
extremists, ill-pleased to see among its officers not only such
extremely moderate trade-unionists as Henderson and Bowerman
but politicians of every party and Anglican clergyman and bishops.
Ruskin College also took umbrage at these new schemes, whose
very existence seemed to imply that it had failed to fulfil its foun
ders hopes. Dennis Hird, supported by all his students, raised the
arms against the moderate policy of the govern
entire college in
ing body. Indirectly, the revolt was aimed at the youthful

Workers Educational Association.
But after a two years struggle Hird was driven from Ruskin
College and obliged to found in London a rival college supported
by the subscriptions of a few trade unions more revolutionary
7
than the rest. Meanwhile, the Workers Educational Association

carried out its programme, whose details had been settled by a
committee of fourteen, of whom seven represented the univer
sities, seven the working class. Tutorial classes were organized
and regular weekly lectures given in all centres where they were
asked for. The complete course lasted two years. Every year
twenty-four An
lectures were given. hour s lecture was followed
an hour s discussion. In the interval between the lectures
by open
the tutor was at the students disposition to give them advice and
correct their essays. Subsidized by grants from trade unions and
co-operative societies, the universities, the local authorities, and
the Board of Education, and staffed by young and enthusiastic
tutors, sufficiently well paid to be able to devote themselves
entirely to the work, the new educational movement prospered. 1
1
The Oxford Committee held that a tutor could undertake five classes, and decided to
pay 80 per class or 400 perannum for full work. Cambridge pays 72 a class and
89
The much from their tutors, but the tutors learned
students learnt
from their pupils. For both alike the Tutorial Classes,
little less
like Ruskin College but on a far

larger scale were schools in
which they were preparing themselves to become the future
leaders of the Labour party.
ii
Thus, the most important measures adopted by the Liberal

Government in the sphere of public education the provision of
free meals to poor children in elementary schools, the steps taken
to render secondary education democratic and higher education
accessible to the working class were all
directly borrowed from
the programme of the Labour party. It would be incorrect to say
that thisnew party won an important success at the election of
January 1906, for that election gave it birth. Hitherto, there had
been no Labour party, but merely a Labour Representation Com
mittee, whose stalwarts asked themselves, not without anxiety,
what the result of the appeal to the nation would be. They were
a tiny group, very unimportant in
still
comparison with the two
powerful party organizations, the Liberal and the Unionist. A
small room in the nat occupied by Ramsay MacDonald and his
family on the second floor of a house in Lincoln s Inn Fields; a
table; two or three chairs; if a fourth or fifth visitor turned up,
he was given a seat on the
piles of newspapers and magazines
which Uttered the floor this was the headquarters of the future
Labour party. The three victories at Clitheroe, Woolwich, and
Barnard Castle1 had for the moment inspired the members of the
Committee with unbounded hope, and the Liberals on their side,
impressed by these unexpected successes, had in many constituen
cies made haste to conclude alliances with the Labour
group.
When the election campaign opened, in twenty-one one-member
constituencies the Liberal had retired in favour of the Labour
London 60. Other Universities have hitherto paid less* (A. Mansbridgc, University
Tutorial Classes, p. 116), In 1905 the Workers Educational Association counted
eight
branches, a hundred affiliated organizations and 1,000 individual members, in 1914 179
branches, 2,555 Affiliated organizations, 11,430 individual members. The Tutorial Classes
began in the school year 1908-9 with 234 students attending eight classes. ... In 1913-14
there were 3,234 students attending 145 classes (A. Mansbridge, An Adventure ...
pp.
67-8). For the grants from the Board of Education see A. Mansbridge, University Tutorial
Classes, Appendix II, p. 136, also the Board of Education Regulations for Further Education, an
annual publication which began in 1907-8
1
See vol. v, pp. 278-9, 363.
90
IRELAND, EDUCATION, LABCTTR
candidate, and in ten two-member constituencies the Labour can
didate shared the same platform with the Liberal. Later, however,
the question of tariff reform had seemed to relegate Labour ques
tions to the background. A
considerable number of by-elections
were held between the Barnard Castle election and the General
Election and only one working-class candidate was returned, a
miner named Richards in Monmouthshire, and he stood as a
Liberal. Two Labour candidates, on the other hand, who stood
in opposition to the Liberal and Protectionist candidates at
Norwich and in Lancashire, found themselves at the bottom of
the poll and did not even prevent the election of the Liberal. In
consequence, the Liberals became less tractable, negotiations be
tween the old party and the new group more difficult. 1 In January
1906 there was a considerable number of three-cornered con
tests. The total number of candidates supported by the Labour
2
Representation Committee was fifty-one that is to say, the
Committee made itself responsible for a quarter of their election
expenses and undertook, if they were elected, to provide an
annual salary of 200 a year while they remained in Parliament.
What would be the result at the Election of this friction between
the Liberals and Labour men? Would it prove damaging to either
or to both?
In the event the Government majority was so overwhelming
that neither suffered. In two Lanarkshire
constituencies, at Wigan
in Lancashire, at Stockton-on-Tees, and at Grimsby a split vote
between the Liberals and Labour resulted in the election of the
Unionist candidate. But almost everywhere the Liberal or* the
Labour candidate was returned, 3 Of the 51 candidates put up by
the Labour Representation Committee 29 were elected and
immediately formed themselves at Westminster into a special
group which called itself the Labour party and to show its entire
independence of the Government sat on the opposition benches.
Parliamentary statisticians, however, did not regard these 29
as
1
For the negotiations conducted in the autumn of 1905 through the channel of George
Cadbury, the great Quaker chocolate-manufacturer, see A. G. Gardiner, Life of George
Cadbury, p. 8 1.
1
Besides eighteen candidates representing the miners and seven candidates put forward
by the Social Democratic Federation. For a complete account of the working-class can
didates, see J. Keir Hardic, Labour and the forthcoming Election* (Nineteenth Century,
January 1906; vol. lix, p. 12 sqq.).
*
For a good analysis of the election results see Keir Hardie, The Labour Patty* (National
Review* February 1906; vol. xlvi, pp. 1002 sqq.).
91
the only Labourmembers in the new House. Some even reckoned
54, among them 14 miners who had their separate electoral organi
zation and persisted in forming a group apart. Of these 54, 45
were of working-class origin. 1 If among the members of the
Independent Labour party Ramsay MacDonald had been a pupil
teacher, Snowden a clerk in the civil service, and Jowett was an
employer, this does not alter the fact that the victory of Labour
at the polls was the
victory of a class rather than a party. At first
sight these 50 working men seemed an unimportant group in
comparison with the 200 Nonconformist members. But if at
Westminster these Nonconformists were a formidable body of
representatives, they represented only the sects swamped in the ,
twentieth century by a vaster and more powerful electorate. The

50 working-class members, on the other hand, could regard them
selves with good reason as the
genuine representatives of the
enormous majority of the voters. If the Cabinet proved too
obedient to the orders of the representatives of
Nonconformity,
alienating the sympathies of the electorate. On
it ran the risk of
the other hand, not only the Liberal members of Parliament but
all the members without
exception, even the Conservatives, were
aware after January 1906 they refused to take the griev
that, if
ances voiced by the Labour members
seriously, they might lose
their voters en masse to Labour. We
have here wrote Balfour ,
on January 17, 1906, to the King s private secretary, to do with

something much more important than the swing of the pendulum
or all the squabbles about Free Trade and Fiscal Reform. are We
face to face (no doubt in a milder
form) with the Socialistic diffi
cultieswhich loom so large on the Continent. Unless I am greatly
mistaken, the Election of 1906 inaugurates a new era/ 2 Balfour no
doubt was not sorry to make this observation, for it was the
Liberals who would be the first to suffer from the birth of the
Labour party. It was none the less true, as also was the
parenthesis
about the mild character ofEnglish Socialism. For if in the whole
1
Thirty members who
refused to join .the Labour party (in fact, they complained
bitterly that the Labour party had
stolen their title, for a Labour Group had existed in the
previous Parliament) constituted a Trade Union Labour Group within the ranks of the
Liberal party (G. M. Alcock,
Fifty Years of Trade Unionism, p. 365). But the group lost
much of its importance when the fourteen miners left it for the Labour
party and it soon
disappeared.
8
Arthur Balfour to Lord Knqilys, January 17, 1906
(Sir Sidney Lee, King Edward VII...
vol. ii, p. 449). Cf. Arthur Balfour to Lord
Saint-Aldwyn, January 1906 (Lady Vic
a<$,
toria Hicks-Beach, Life of Sir Michael Hicks-Beach

(Earl Saint-Aldwyn) 1932; vol. ii f p. 224).
92
of Europe there was no Socialist party which was so completely
representative of a class, in spite of this (or was it because of this?),
there was not one so undoctrinal It was a significant fact that the
few Socialist candidates who had come forward in one or two
constituencies, whether Social Democrats of Hyndman s group
or independent Socialists, had been defeated without exception.
At Burnley, Hyndman had not even the satisfaction of preventing
the election of the Labour candidate. The new Labour members,
men who owed their political education to long years of trade-
union negotiation, flattered by their membership of the first
Parliament in the world and the courteous reception they re
ceived, felt almost overawed as they listened to the discussion of
questions of general policy which transcended their professional
1
competence. They were guiltless of any desire to identify the
interests of their class with those of the human race, or achieve
their aims at the cost of overthrowing the entire fabric of society ;
they were devout Christians and moderate patriots. What then

were their demands? In the first
place they demanded that the
wrong upon the trade unions by the hostile judgment in

inflicted
1901 of the House of Lords should be righted, and that since the
supreme court of appeal had decided to interpret the statutes of
1871 and 1875 dealing with the unions in a sense opposed to the
plain intention of their authors they insisted that these statutes
should be recast in such terms that the judges ill-will should never
again be able to nullify the intention of the legislature.
12
Aswe have already seen, the Unionist Government, anxious

lest the discontent aroused among the working classes by the
1
Winston Churchill(speech at Hartlepool, May 12, 1906) mentions as one of the dis
tinctive features of the new
Parliament the strength and influence of the Labour party .
He continues: The interests of the country were greatly advantaged by the increase in the
number of Labour representatives. They were a stable and not an unstable element and
added greatly to the wisdom and the earnestness and consequently to the dignity of the
House/ Cf. Sir Almeric Ktzroy, August 14, 1907: Haldane s and Grey s comments upon
the relations of Ministers to their large and heterogeneous following were full of interest.
They were both agreed that the Labour Members gave them much less trouble than
gentlemen in close political connection a fact which they were inclined to ascribe to the
circumstance that most of the Labour party had through their Trade Unions become men
of affairs, capable of apprehending any practical issue submitted to them. Haldane declared
that, in relation to military administration, he had found individual Labour members most
ready to listen to reason and accept explanations offered in a reasonable spirit, and Sir E.
Grey instanced Mackarness, Colton, and Bellairs as types of an opposite tendency*
(Memoirs, vol. i, pp. 320-30).
93
judgment of the House of Lords might have disastrous conse

quences at the polls, appointed a Royal Commission of five
members to inquire into the question of trade disputes and com
binations. 1 It would have reported in the autumn of 1905, on the
eve of the General Election, if the Cabinet had not objected to
the report being used as a source of political capital by the candi
dates of all parties. 2 It was not therefore published until January 15
under another Cabinet when the rout of the Unionists had
already begun. In substance the report proposed that three points
which the late judgments had rendered doubtful should be deter
mined by fresh legislation. These decisions had restricted the right
of picketing that is to say, the right of strikers to make the strike
effective by making it complete. The Commission proposed that
it should be expressly declared lawful to persuade to strike i.e.
to desist from working, apart from procuring breach of contract .
It further
proposed to delete from the statute of 1875 the too in
definite offence of watching and besetting a house and to substi
tute for it a prohibition of acts in such a manner as to cause a
reasonable apprehension in the mind of any person that violence
will be used to him or his family, or damage be done to his pro
perty In the second place, to restrict the right to strike, the judges
.
had taken advantages of an omission in the statute of 1875. The

statute had laid down that an act committed in the course of a
strike by several persons should not be deemed an act of criminal
conspiracy, if it would not constitute a crime, when committed

by a single individual. But it had not laid down that they were
not liable to a civil action, and civil proceedings had actually been
taken. The Commission proposed that they should be expressly
barred. Finally, these limitations upon the right to strike had been
rendered a very serious menace to the trade unions by the cele
brated Taff Vale Decision which held the unions liable to damages
for offences committed by their members in the course of a strike.
Until 1901 the judges had interpreted the intentional silence on
this
point of the Act of 1871 as implying non-liability. Now that
the courts had adopted the contrary view what steps should be
1 A Royal Commission appointed to inquire into the subject of Trade Disputes and Trade
Combinations and as to the law affecting them t and to report on the law applicable to the same and
the effect of any modification thereof, June 1903. Report of the Royal Commission on Trade
<5,
Disputes and Trade Combinations t January 15, 1906.

*
Sidney and Beatrice Webb, The History of Trade Unionism (revised edition extended
to 1920), 1920, p. 605.
94
It was one
taken? thing not to declare the trade unions liable,
to lay down
quite
another positively that they were not, even
when the acts adjudged illegal by the courts had been committed
by their express orders. The Commission recoiled from such an
enormity and suggested a device which betrayed the systematic
and elaborate workmanship of the Webbs. It proposed to legalize
unions and strikes, and give the legal union a constitution which
would protect it from responsibility for its members acts if
unauthorized and immediately disavowed. It further proposed
that the unions should be permitted to separate their benefit fund
from the rest of their funds so that it could no
longer be confis
cated during a strike, and become, if they wished, corporations
capable of concluding legal agreements with the employers and

their own members. It was
proposed, in short, not to abolish the
liability
of the unions, but to restrictit
by defining it, and thus
1
take the first
steps towards remodelling their entire status.
When on March 28 the Attorney-General, Sir John Walton,
expounded in the House of Commons the principles of the
Government s Bill, they were obviously identical with those on
which the commission had based its report. In the first place the
Bill, reviving the phraseology of a statute of 1 859,2 inadvertently
repealed by the Act of 1871, declared peaceful persuasion during

a strike lawful. It extended to civil proceedings the protection
against criminal given by the statute of 1875. Finally, it dealt with

the vital question of the unions financial liability by imposing
upon them the obligation to form executive committees Acts .
committed by these committees themselves or by their regular

agents acting within their instructions would alone render the
union liable for damages. To this solution only one .alternative
was possible, the total abolition of liability. In an impassioned
peroration the Attorney-General pointed out the dangers of the

1 and B. the Commission reported favour of the Trade
According to S. "Webb in
Union accepting full
responsibility
for its own action,
subject to considerable, butfar from
adequate, amendment of the Law (The History of Trade Unionism, revised edition, 1920,
p. 600). But in spite of the fact that apparently he did not regard
these amendments as
adequate Sidney Webb was one of the three members to sign the majority report. In a
short note appended to the report he pointed out that he desired to go further and con
templated a system of trade unionism which would render strikes impossible (Report of the
Royal Commission on Trade Disputes and Trade Combinations, p. 18). For the views of
Professor William Ashley, closely akin to Webb s, see his article entitled Trade Unions
and the Law (National Review, January 1906; vol. xlvii, pp. 56 sqq.).
z
22 Viet., Cap. 34 An Act to amend and explain an Act of the sixth year of the reign
;
of George the Fourth to repeal the Laws relating to the Combination of Workmen and
to make other provisions in lieu thereof. (Combination of Workmen Act, 1859.)
95
latter course. It was antidemocratic because it placed the trade
union in a privileged position at law. And it would expose the
unions to the risk of being committed by their most irresponsible
1
agents to actions they disapproved.
But the champions of the proletariat were up in arms at once.
They could not forget that in 1905 a Unionist House of Commons
had voted by a very large majority in favour of the complete
abolition of liability; that during the Election campaign it had
been made clear at every public meeting at which the question
was raised that the workers demanded nothing less, and that many
candidates, beginning with Sir John Walton himself, had pledged
themselves, if returned, to secure the unions against liability under
any circumstances. Sir John had in fact contrived to introduce into
his peroration language which seemed intended to cover a retreat.
It was for Parliament, he had
pointed out, to decide whether it
approved the solution proposed by the Government or preferred
another. And he had refused to determine beforehand the form
the Bill would finally assume. The Labour speakers therefore did
not oppose the first reading of the Bill on the understanding that
the Government would not oppose its future amendment in
accordance with their wishes. They were aware of the
voting
power at their back and knew that all the members of the House
were equally aware of it. *It was a more serious question than
simply a question of party politics, inasmuch as it was a question
which affected the great mass of the workers in the country/ 2
Two days later the House of Commons was invited to discuss
the second reading of a Labour Bill dealing with the same
question
and which, while agreeing with the Government s Bill on the first
two points, proceeded to lay down that a trade union could never
be made liable for damages on account of illegal acts committed
by its members. An extremely heated debate was in progress
3
when the Prime Minister intervened. He asked

permission to
speak the language not of law (he was no lawyer) but of common
sense. The solution
put forward by the Labour Bill possessed, he
admitted, the advantage as compared with that proposed by the
Government two days before that, if adopted, it gave less scope
for litigation. After all, it
simply restored the condition of affairs
1
H. of C., March 28, 1906 (Parliamentary Debates, 4th Scries, vol. cliv,
2 pp. 1295 sqq.).
H. of C., March 28, 1906, Shackleton s speech (ibid., vol. cliv, p.
3
1316).
H. of C., March 30, 1906: Hudson s Motion (Parliamentary Debates, 4th Series, vol.
civ, pp. 21 sqq.).
which had existed for the last thirty years of the nineteenth cen
tury and which had favoured the growth, on the whole beneficial,
of the trade unions. Twice already, in 1904 and in 1905, he had
then should he reject it now he
voted for it himself. Why that
was Prime Minister? He asked the House of Commons to pass
the second reading of the Bill. Its principle would then be em
bodied in the Government s Bill. 1 This course was adopted.
When the Government measure came up once more for discus
sion, it was no longer of the Attorney-General but of
in charge
the Solicitor-General, Sir William Robson. He left the question
of the absolute non-liability of the unions to the free vote of the
House, admitting that the Government could not maintain the
original form of the Bill without considering
or consulting the
2
opinions of the trade unions The debate which followed in July,
.
August, and November was rapid. The opponents

of the Bill,
thus altered to satisfy the demands of labour, never amounted to a
hundred, only once exceeded fifty, and on one occasion, and
moreover when the decisive issue of liability or non-liability was
put to the vote, were no more than twenty. The champions
of the
privileges of labour
even won a further victory. Sir Charles Dilke,
with the assent of the Government, carried an amendment that
no judicial proceedings could be taken even if a strike involved a
breach of contract. 3 Balfour delighted to humiliate the Cabinet
4
by pointing to its disgraceful retreat on March 30. But if the
legal members of the Cabinet
had indeed been compelled to
retreat among them it was said Asquith and Haldane Camp-
bell-Bannerman had asserted his authority and his personal pres
tige emerged enhanced
from the debates. And had not Balfour
himself retreated along with the rest? When the Bill came up for
the third reading he refused on behalf of his party to challenge a
division. He had always, he said, believed that the existing law
as to safeguard the benefit funds of the
required amending, so
1 H. of C., March 30, 1906 (Parliamentary Debates, 4th Series, vol. civ, pp.
*
H. of C., April 24, 1906 (ibid., vol. civ, pp. 1482 sqq,).
4
*
Clause 3 of the measure lays down that an act done by a person in contemplation or
furtherance of a trade dispute shall not be actionable on the ground only [that it induces
some other person to break a contract of employment or] that it is an interference with the
trade, business or employment of some other person, or with the right
of some other
person to dispose of his capital or his labour as he will*. The
words placed in brackets were
added on the motion of Sir Charles Dilke, H. of C, August 3. 1906 (ibid., vol. cboi, p.
1678). For the serious legal consequences
of this amendment see M. W. Geldart The
Present Law of Trade Disputes and Trade Unions* (Political Quarterly, May 1914, P- 33).
4 H. of
C., April 24, 1906 (Parliamentary Debates, 4th Series, vol. dv, pp. 1527-8,
97
trade unions. He would
not make himself responsible for im
1
perilling those fundsby voting against the Bill. The House of
Lords could not oppose the unanimous decision of the Lower
House. At the opening of December, at the very moment when
under his leadership the Lords were engaged in garrotting the
Education Bill, Lord Lansdowne pointed out that the country
had spoken, that if they sent back the Trade Disputes Bill, it
would be returned to them in a more embittered spirit, and there
fore that the only possible course was to pass it. 2 Thereupon this
3
important measure, a scandal to the lawyers, was passed without
division or debate less than a year after the Liberals had come into
power. Its enactment was a victory not of the Liberals over the
Conservatives, but of the proletariat over the bourgeoisie.
13
The working class put forward at the beginning of 1906 a fur

ther claim. This time they did not demand that the policy fol
lowed by the Unionist Government should be reversed, but that
a policy which in their opinion had been pursued too timidly
1
H. of C., November 9, 1906 (ibid., vol. clxiv, pp. 906, sqq., esp. p. 909).
*
H. of L., December 4, 1906 (ibid., vol. clxvi, p. 702).
*
6Edw. Cap. 47: An Act to provide for the regulation of Trade Unions and Trade
7,
Disputes (Trade Disputes Act, 1906). It would be interesting to know how it was adminis
tered. It appears to have applied most strictly. The judges, and not only Tories like Dar
ling, but such an advanced Liberal as the Chancellor, Lord Loreburn, were content with
lamentations and protests when called upon to apply it. See a list of their protests in a letter
over the signature of C. Arthur Buckley in the Spectator for February 17, 1912. As the
years went on, the Courts became increasingly favourable to the contentions of the unions.
At first they refused to grant immunity to illegal Acts, not expressly specified in the Statute
of 1906 (Conway v. Wade, 1908; Lark v. Belfast Harbour Commissioners, 1908). But in
1913 in Vacher & Sons v. The London Society of Compositors, the House of Lords re
fused to condemn the Compositors Union for defamation, though the defamation was
not in connection with a labour dispute. It regarded the defamation as itself constituting
such a dispute (S. and B. "Webb, History of Trade Unionism, revised edition, 1920, p. 606).
If, however, the employers were thus disarmed by the Courts, they took their revenge in
other ways by making use of the police during a strike, especially when the military re
placed the ordinary police force. General Macready relates how, when called upon to
keep order during a strike in South Wales at the end of 1910, he decided on his respon
sibility that the strike pickets must not exceed six persons, that they should not be per
mitted to light fires to keep themselves warm within a given radius of an inhabited build
ing, that their members must be distinguishable by white bands on the arm, and might
only exercise their right of peaceful persuasion under police supervision, as otherwise the
police would be unable to determine whether the persuasion was genuinely peaceful
(General the Right Hon. Sir Nevtt Macready, Annals of an Active Life, vol. i, pp. 147-8).
For the restrictions to which the right of picketing remained subject, see also C. Watney
and J. A. Little, Industrial Warfare, The Aims and Claims of Capital and Labour, 1912, pp.
307-8.
98
should be carried further. We have seen how in 1897 the Unionist
Government passed a Workmen s Compensation Bill which the
unions regarded as a victory. And the extension of its benefits in
1
1900 to die agricultural labourers had been a second success.
But they were not satisfied.
They demanded more,* and the
Government, to prove that it had no objection in principle to
their claims, appointed in 1904 a committee of inquiry. The
latter, however, was perhaps obeying the unavowed wishes of
the Cabinet when it reported adversely on almost every point.3
Render the of the statute universal? It was out of the
application
question. Itwould involve the absurdity that if a private person
paid a passer-by to sweep the snow from his doorstep, he would
be deemed, in case of accident, a responsible employer. Moreover,
what ground was there for bringing within the scope of the law
occupations devoid of professional risk of any kind? It would be
better to follow the German precedent, followed hitherto, and
gradually extend a statute originally applicable to particular cate

gories of workers to other categories, one at a time. Pay benefit
not only from the fifteenth day as prescribed by the Act of 1897
but from the first? It would be a premium on idleness, a direct
encouragement to a worker to go on the sick list and, if in addition
he was in receipt of benefit from a union or friendly society, he
might, thanks to the indemnity paid by his employer, receive a
total sum in excess of his wages. Extend the benefit of the kw
to the victims of those industrial diseases due in the opinion of
experts to the unhealthy nature of certain occupations? dan A

gerous experiment, the report declared. Experts were not infallible.
It was better to keep to the common-sense distinction between
accident and disease ;
and if it were desired to protect the worker
against the risk of industrial diseases to incorporate that risk in a
general measure of insurance against sickness.

These negative conclusions were not calculated to appease the
unions at a moment when they were becoming increasingly hos
tile to a Cabinet and party that were losing their hold over the
country.
1
See vol. v, p. 237.
2
H. of G, May 19, 1904. Shackleton s
speech. (Parliamentary Debates, 4th Scries,
vol. cxxxv, p. 408.)
8
Home Office Departmental Committee on Workmen s Compensation: Report of the Depart
mental Committee appointed to inquire into the Law relating to Compensation for Injuries to
Workmen, vol. i, Report and Appendices 1904 (SirKenelm Digby s Committee), vol. ii, Minutes
of Evidence with Index, 1905, vol. iii, Supplementary Index, 1906.
99
The pressure of the working class compelled

the Government
1
to introduce a Bill at the opening of the session of I905. It simply
extended the benefits of the Act of 1897 to several categories of
employment. And on one point it restricted its application. Com
plaints were made
that the Act had made it harder for elderly men
to find work: less robust and more liable to accidents, their em
ployment involved too much risk to the employer. The Bill
proposed that workers over the age
of sixty should be entitled to
conclude special contracts with their employers, less costly for the
latter. Moreover, the introduction of the BiU in the House of
Lords seems to have been an empty gesture. Once introduced, it
was dropped immediately. In September the Trade Union Con

the Government s inertia and
gress once more protested against
demanded the establishment of a system of compulsory insur
ance. 2 The resignation of the Unionist Cabinet followed and the
Liberal victory of 1906. Labour was to receive satisfaction.
In the first place and this was a novelty in the history of
British labour legislation the Workmen s Compensation Act of
3
I9o6, a statute of consolidation and amendment, was a measure of
universal application. It embraced any person who has entered
into or works under a contract of service or apprenticeship with
an employer, whether by way of manual labour, clerical work or
otherwise, and whether the contract is expressed or implied, is
oral or in writing The only categories excluded from its scope
.
were non-manual workers whose annual remuneration exceeded
1
H. of L., April 4, 1905, Lord Helper s motion (Parliamentary Debates, 4th Series, vol.
cxliv,pp. 263 sqq.).
2
The measure which would be passed in 1906 did not depart from the system set up in
1897, the French as opposed to the German system which required the employer to ensure
himself against the risk of compensating his employee. The system had its drawbacks and
the report of Sir Kenelm Digby s committee had pointed them out. Many small em
ployers failed to insure themselves whether from economy or mere neglect and many
workmen who were victims of accidents neglected to make use of their rights. The law
often remained a dead letter, at Sheffield for example, a town of small workshops (Report
pp. 12-13). Throughout the debates the representatives of labour continued to demand a
system of compulsory insurance (see H. of C., March 1906, Barnes speech; Parl
2<5,
Deb., 4th Ser., vol. cliv, p. 902). But the Cabinet, while not refusing an inquiry,
insisted on the difficulties involved and on this point the only satisfaction the
champions
of compulsory insurance received was the insertion in the clause dealing with occupational
diseases of a provision enabling the Government by a provisional order which must be
subsequently ratified by Parliament to introduce compulsory insurance in any industry

where there existed a society insuring against the risk in question and containing the
majority of the employers.
3
6 Edw. 7, Cap. 58: An Act to consolidate and amend the Law with respect to Com
pensation to Workmen for Injuries suffered in the course of their Employment Workmen s
(
Compensation Act, 1906).
100
^250, casual labourers, workers who did not work for the trade
or business of their employer, those who worked in their own
homes, in the language of the Act outworkers and members of ,
the employer s family. Step by step in the course of the debates

several restrictions imposed by the Bill in its original form were
dropped. Shop assistants were given the right to compensation.

Domestic servants also, a concession proposed by Campbell-
Bannerman. The statutes of 1897 and 1900 were jointly applicable
to 7,250,000 workers. It was the intention of the Liberal Govern
ment to extend their benefits to a further 2,000,000. Finally, no
fewer than 6,000,000 became entitled to compensation for the
first time.
In the second place the Bill reduced from a fortnight to a week
the period at the end of which the employee who had met with an
accident began to receive compensation, a sum equal to half his
wages. The Labour members asked for a further reduction to
three days and, though they failed to secure it, were at least suc
cessful in obtaining that when the victim of an accident was kept
from his work over a fortnight the compensation should be
reckoned from the day of the accident. The Government, on the
other hand, attempted in vain to re-insert into the Bill, subject to
certain restrictions, the clause the Unionists had inserted in the Bill
of 1905, permitting employers to conclude special contracts with
workers over sixty years old. It was dropped during
the debate on
the Bill.Moreover the original Bill reproduced a provision of the
Act of 1897 which refused compensation to a workman guilty of
serious or wilful misconduct*. The Labour members disliked this
restriction and even a worker guilty of misconduct had the right
to compensation in the event of death or serious and permanent
1
disablement .
would give the workers the same

Thirdly, industrial diseases
right to compensation as accidents in die strict sense. schedule A
enumerated six of these: anthrax, poisoning by lead, mercury,
2
phosphorus, or arsenic, and ankylostomiasis. The ministry
was
empowered to add other diseases to the list
by departmental
orders. And a committee was immediately appointed to inquire
into the desirability of doing so. It reported in favour of adding
* H. of November
,, 29, 1906 (Parliamentary Debates, 4th Series, vol. clxvi, pp. 367
q)
*
A disease, caused by hookworm, affecting miners (Trs. note).
101
hteen other diseases to the six mentioned in the original
edule. 1 This was done by a departmental order on May 22,
H
After 1906, so important in the history of British Labour legis
lation, 1907 was a barren year. Among the measures of social
reform brought forward by the Cabinet the most interesting were
those which attacked the monopoly of the great landlords, always
odious to the masses. In his election programme of December 21,
1905, Campbell-Bannerman had pledged himself to deal with the
problem. The speech from the throne which opened the new
Parliament had announced an inquiry into the means by which a
larger number of the population may be attracted to and retained
on the soil and had promised that it should be carried out with
,
out unnecessary delay. In 1907 three Bills were introduced in the

Commons. The Opposition had the pleasure of pointing out that
each was based on a different principle. 3 The first concerned Ire
land. As we have already seen4 its object was to settle on the land
as owners farmers evicted
by their landlords. Therefore, if it
were passed and successfully put into operation, it would buttress
private property in land. The second concerned Scotland. Its
object was to extend to the Lowlands measures already adopted
in the Highlands on behalf of the small tenants, the crofters. Like
Gladstone s Land Act of 1882 it did not confiscate property
Irish
but simply limited the amount of rent payable and protected the
farmer against unjustifiable eviction. The third concerned
England. spirit was distinctly Socialistic. It obliged the County
Its
Councils, if the Board of Agriculture on inquiry deemed it neces

sary, to purchase land for small agricultural holdings on which to
settle not independent owners but tenants of the Council. 5 The
1
Report of the Departmental Committee on Compensation for Industrial Diseases, 1907.
(Herbert Samuel was chairman.)
2
A further report published in 1908 advised the inclusion of three additional industrial
diseases. This was done, December 2, 1908.
3
H, of C., August 13, 1907, Arthur Balfour s speech (Parliamentary Debates, 4th Series,
vol. cbooc, pp. 1105 sqq.).
4
See above, pp. 53-7.
5
7 Edw. 7, Cap. 54: An Act to amend the Law with respect to Small Holdings and
Allotments (Small Holdings and Allotments Act, 1907). The Bill was based on the work of a
committee appointed by the previous Government in April 1905 (Lord Onslow s Com
mittee) which reported in 1906: (Departmental Committee on Small Holdings). Report of the
102
House of Lords threw out the Scottish Bill, but let the two others
pass.
The English Bill have produced interesting results
appears to
at least during the years which immediately followed its enact
ment. 1
An Act of 1908 reinforced its
provisions and completed
them by further provisions authorizing the local authorities to
divide the land they purchased into allotments which the poor
2
inhabitants of large towns could rent to grow vegetables. These,
however, were petty reforms ill
adapted to arouse popular
enthusiasm.
Nor was it more likely to be kindled by the Factory and Work
3
shop Act, which extended the provisions of the Factory Act of
1901 to laundries, or the Employment of Women Act, which
4
modified on two points of detail the provisions of the Factory

Act of 1901 and the Coal Mines Regulation Act of 1887 regulating
female labour. A
comprehensive statute dealing with industrial
and financial companies whose object was to make illegal certain
current practices which defrauded the public was more important
and obviously of Socialist tendency, as indeed had been the Com
State a larger measure of
panies Act of 1900, since it gave the
to inquire into and

Departmental Committee appointed by the Board of Agriculture and Fisheries
report upon the subject of Small Holdings in Great Britain;
With copy of the Minutes appointing
the Committee, 1906. The Committee s terms of reference were to inquire into the adminis
tration and working of the Small Holdings Act, 1892; to examine the various arrangc-
.ments made by landowners in recent years for the provision of smaller agricultural hold
are more likely to be
ings; and to report as to the condition under which such holdings
attended with success and as to measures which may most advantageously be taken, either
by legislation* co-operative association, or otherwise, to secure the increase of their num
ber The preceding Statute of 1892 which was permissive and left County Councils the
.
option of buying or leasing, selling or letting to tenants had yielded very poor
results. In
ten years only 652 acres had been acquired.

1
For the execution of the Statute see from 1908 onwards the annual reports of the
Board: Board of Agriculture and Fisheries : Annual Report of Proceedings under the Small Hold
ings and Allotments Act, i908:
The Universities and College Estates Act; The Glebe Lands Act,
1888; The Improvement of Land Acts; The Settled Land Acts; The Agricultural Holdings Acts
and certain other Acts; In the year The number of acres acquired annually by the opera
. . .
tion of the Act rose from 21,417 acres in 1908 to 39,472 in 1909, fell to 33,335 in 1910, rose
again to 36,358 in 1911. After this we note a constant fall
until the war: 33493 acres in
1912; 34,493 in 1913, in 1914.

i<$>537
TT
8 Edw. 7, Cap. 36: An Act to consolidate the enactments with respect to Small Hold
*
ings and Allotments in England and Wales (Small Holdings and Allotments Act f 1908):
7Edw,. 7, Cap. 39 : An Act to amend the Factory and Workshop Act, 1901 with respect
8
to Laundries and to extend that Act to certain Institutions and to provide for the inspection
of certain premises (Factory and Workshop Act, i907). The influence exercised by the
Catholic Church in the House of Commons generally and over the Labour party in
particular*made itself felt during the debate, when the Catholic members obtained the
exemption of convents from inspection by the Home Office.
7 Edw. 7, Cap. 10: An Act to repeal Section 57 of the Factory and Workshop Act
*
to the
1901, and part of Section 7 of the Coal Mines Regulation Act, 1887, relating
Employment of Women and Children (Employment of Women Act, 1907).
103
control over private companies. But it was a Socialism which did
1
not directly affect the proletariat, a class from which company

promoters and stockbrokers drew no shareholders or victims.
This slackening of the Government s legislative activity co
incided with the appearance of a marked coolness between Liberal
and Labour Important Liberals denounced the
politicians.
Socialist peril.
2
Labour circles took offence. The Liberal leaders
with anxiety, the Unionist with hope, saw the Labour party
assume a more distinctively Socialist character and constitute itself
definitely a third party strictly independent
of both the older
lost votes, and the tide of enthusiasm which
parties. If the Liberals
had swept them into power must inevitably recede, the Conser
vatives might profit in the constituencies by this division of votes
between Liberalism and Labour. Their hopes were indeed actually
fulfilled in April 1906 at Cockermouth in Cumberland. The Inde
Unionist
pendent candidature of the miner Smillie enabled the
candidate to defeat the Liberal.
Would the same thing happen the following summer at Jarrow-
on-Tyne when a Labour candidate and an Irish Nationalist came
forward against the Liberal candidate, already faced by a Unionist ?
The result of the election took everyone by surprise. The Liberal
candidate was indeed defeated, but it was by the Labour candi
date, Peter Curran, who received 5,000 votes as against 4,000
given to the Conservative, only 3,500 to the Liberal and 2,000 to
die Nationalist. Six weeks later at Colne "Valley in the West
Riding of Yorkshire when a Socialist presented himself against
a
Liberal and a Conservative he was returned at (the head of the poll,
though it was a very close contest. Both were seats which
the
Liberals had been accustomed to regard as safe. In ithe Colne
Valley a Liberal had been returned unopposed in 1906. Moreover,

if at Jarrow the Labour candidate had been the official .candidate
of the Labour party, neither at Cockermouth nor at Colne Valley
was this the case. In both instances the Labour candidates Smillie
at Cockermouth, Victor Grayson at Colne Valley were inde
pendent candidates and revolutionaries. Victor Grayson, origin-
1
1
7 Edw. 7, Cap. 50: An Act to amend the Companies* Act, 1862 to 1900 (Companies
Act, 1907). It reinforced a number of details and completed the provisions of the Act of
1900, thus carrying out the recommendations of a Commission appointed by the Unionist
Cabinet in 1905. We must caU attention to a section imposing certain conditions on foreign
companies operating in Great Britain. It betrays the same inspiration as particular clauses
of the Patent Act and Merchant Shipping Act.
J The Master of
Elibank, speech at West Linton, Peeblesshire, August 25, 1906.
104
mechanic, had studied theology with the intention of be
ally a
coming a minister, but had abandoned theology (it was a sign of
the times) for political economy and become a Socialist journalist.
In the House of Commons the violent scenes he provoked attrac
ted the attention of England, indeed of the whole of Europe.
It is not surprising that the popular discontent which found
expression at the polls also manifested itself in the Socialist Groups.

On the very morrow of its defeat in January 1906, the Social
Democratic Federation resumed its revolutionary campaign,
changed its name to the Social Democratic Party and advocated
the fusion of the orgamiz/ations ready to work on a definite
all
democratic basis, for the realization of Socialism . Its membership

increased rapidly and when at the opening of 1908 the founder of
the Federation, Hyndman, proposed to effect this fusion by union
with the Labour party that is to say, by adopting the very policy
he had himself repudiated in 1900, he was defeated by a large
majority. The Labour party was led by a Henderson and a Mac-
Donald, and the extremists of Social Democracy refused to lower
the red flag. At the opposite extremity of the Socialist camp the
Fabian Society was roused from its conservative tranquillity by
the sudden incursion of H. G, Wells, who for two years, until
he wearied of the enterprise and returned to novel-writing,
attempted to transform the Society into a political group employ
ing its election agents and putting forward candidates in as many
constituencies as possible, its programme being the abolition of
private capital and the destruction of family

selfishness. Finally,
the Independent Labour party, which was led by the same

moderate men who led the Labour party, made life difficult for
its leaders. It was in vain that in 1907 Ramsay MacDonald, to
retain some
authority over the group, used language verging
on
revolutionary. Grayson s election brought the disorder
which pre
vailed in the party to a climax. It was only by resigning from the
executive in April 1909 that MacDonald, Keir Hardie, and
Snowden could escape responsibility for his excesses.
But the Social Democratic party proved as weak as the Federa
tion had been. Wells attempt was but a flash in the pan, a passing
episode quickly forgotten in the history of the Fabian Society.

The opposition of the Independent Labour party to the moderate
policy of the Labour party
was never very violent during the next
few years. The Labour party strictly so called remained the faithful
105
mirror of the British proletariat. MacDonald soon became its
official leader in the House of Commons,
without therefore
member of the Independent Labour party. How
ceasing to be a
are we to describe this Labour party? Was it Socialist or Anti-
Socialist? The party itself did not know. At the
annual conference
held at Hull in January 1908 it rejected by an overwhelming
to pass the very next
majority a motion accepting Socialism, only
day a motion which stated that the Labour party should have as
a definite object the socialization of the means of production, dis
tribution, and exchange. At bottom it was completely indifferent
to theory, concerned simply to defend the immediate interests
of
the working class. It was before everything else moderate and
chose Henderson as its chairman instead of Keir Hardie^ because
Hardie s sentimental utopianism did not express the party s views.
It contemplated making itself a political party
with a regular
in but hesitated to take the step
organization every constituency
for fear of the authority of the Trade Union Con
diminishing
The unions, on their part, would seem to have intended at
gress.
one moment to strengthen their authority by excluding, from the
was to maintain permanent
body of officials whose function it
contact between the party and the Congress, anyone who was not
himself a member of a union. They shrank however from the
the services of such indispensable workers as
prospect of losing
MacDonald and Snowden. Nevertheless, the Labour party was
a corporative and
fundamentally the party of the trade unions,
If we would understand the character of the
professional party.
at this period we must not make too
working-class movement
much of two or three by-elections, or two or three doctrinal dis
putes in the groups representing
labour. We
must rather fix our
attention on the strikes which the unions whose members now
exceeded 2,000,000 began to call the moment the Trade Dis
putes Act of 1906 had
restored their liberty.
On December 21 the Bill became law. A
month had not gone
attracted the atten
by before a strike broke out in London which
tion of the general public, not only because it occurred in the
but even more its nature. It was a strike of
capital, by unexpected
music-hall artists which soon spread to the entire staff. The artists
in their opinion too severe, which
objected to certain conditions,
the managers inserted in their contracts. The musicians and
mechanics in fact music-hall employees of every description
106
IRELAND, EDUCATION, LABOTJR
followed suit. The great music halls of London were
obliged to
In a hall which happened to be vacant the strikers organized
close.
a monster entertainment in aid of their strike and 2,500 pickets
triumphantly asserted the right of peaceful persuasion die law had

just conferred upon them. The stake, during which strict discip
linewas maintained, and which did not interfere with the material
welfare of the nation, had the sympathy of the public. The
managers gave way and a board of conciliation decided to ask
for the services of the Board of Trade s professional arbitrator,
George Askwith. When the twenty-two variety theatres con

cerned had re-opened, the arbitrator held twenty-two meetings,
heard a hundred witnesses and finally drew up and got accepted
by both parties the Music Hall Award of 1907 which, though
altered several times later, constituted the first labour code for all
music-hall employees. It comprised a standard form of contract
and regulations for settling future disputes. It would seem that the
President of the Board of Trade, Lloyd George, was tempted at
first to give the intervention of his Board a more
picturesque
garb and had therefore offered the post of arbitrator to a personage
much in the limelight in London, T. P. O
Connor, a man half
Irish, half English, half politician, half journalist and man of
letters. O Connor refused,
1
But Lloyd George would soon be
occupied with other arbitrations, involved in conflicts of a far
more serious nature and woulcl descend into the arena in person.
There was in the first place the threat in the autumn of 1907 of
a general strike on the railways. It was the first occurrence of its
kind and caused a sensation. Throughout the nineteenth century
practically no tiling
had been heard of the railwaymen. The battle
of the had been fought by the workers of the engineer
proletariat
and textile trades. In 1872 the railwaymen had
ing, building,,
formed for the first time a union intended to comprise all their
branches, the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants. It
stagnated, was soon nothing more than
a friendly society, and
1
Lord Askwith, Industrial Problems and Disputes, pp. 103 sqq. Lord Askwith has kindly
explained at my request a passing allusion in the text.
107
would seem never have had more than io,oop members until
1
to
the Socialist agitation of 1889 gave it a new lease of life, while
creating on its left wing a union of unskilled workers, the General
Railway Workers Union. In 1891 it contained 30,000 members,
in 1900 60,000. But it was still badly organized and the strikes
which broke out among the railwaymen in the closing years of
the century were partial and spasmodic, uncontrolled by the
Executive committee of the Union. They merely endangered its
funds without benefiting the working class. One of these local
strikes was responsible for the counterstroke of the Taff Vale
Decision, which for several years effectively reduced to impo

tence the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants like the
other unions. Nevertheless, even under these circumstances it
accomplished useful work and under the extremely moderate
leadership of Richard Bell saw that the statutes protecting labour
were enforced. The General Election of 1906, by revealing to the
proletariat the extent of its power, gave its activities more aggres
sive turn. The Union leaders devoted the 1906 to year drawing
up a national programme of claims, which was published at the
close of 1907 immediately after the Trade Disputes Bill had re
stored to theUnion complete freedom to strike.
What were these claims? The railwaymen complained that
their wages were too low.
Thirty-eight per cent of them were
paid one pound a week or less; 50 per cent between one pound
and thirty shillings. 1 On the Scotch railways two-thirds of the
men were paid twenty-three shillings a week or less, a third nine
teen shillings a week or less.
2
The railwaymen also complained
that their hours were too long though they had already been
3
considerably reduced by statute. In one single month in 1906 the
total number of hours worked on the
railways amounted to
48,000 days of thirteen hours, 16,000 of fourteen, and some of the
employees worked fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, even eighteen
hours. 4 These long hours endangered the
safety both of travellers
and of the men themselves, who succumbed to fatigue. A delega
tion which the railwaymen had chosen to
approach the owners in
1
The Green Book, 1907, quoted by S. and B. Webb, History of Trade Unionism, revised
edition 1920, p. 527.
2
Richard Glasgow, November 4, 1907.
Bell, speech at
3
63 & 64 Viet.,
Cap. 27: An Act for the better Prevention of Accidents on Railways
(Railway Employment [Prevention of Accidents] Act, 1900.)
4 G.
W. Alcock, Fifty Years ofRailway Trade Unionism, p. 348.
108
their name was still remembered, for it had been, composed almost
1
wholly of maimed men. The companies disputed the Union s
figures. They pointed out that in estimating the wages received,
no account had been taken of the special advantages enjoyed by
railway employees as compared with those of other companies.
They received clothing, often also lodging, were secured against
the risk of unemployment and provided with a retiring pension.
They also pointed out that the hours of a railwayman could not
be compared with those of a miner or textile worker, for
fairly
the former was frequently on duty without any work to perform.
As regards accidents, the men had obtained protective legislation
which had cost the companies dear. The latter could not compen
sate themselves by raising their rates, for these were fixed by law
in the public interest. Indeed, without a previous inquiry the
companies could not even charge the maximum rates permitted

2
by statute. The shares of every company were falling as the
direct result of the decrease in dividends. In 1907 the average divi
dend did not exceed 3! per cent, in ten years it had fallen by 2% per
cent. If the workers claims were granted it would fall to 2 per
3
cent.
The companies way out of a position disastrous
searched for a
in itself, even were made to the men. At first the
if no concessions
British railway system had been one of genuine competition. The
companies had multiplied competing routes between the same

cities and for as long as
possible sought to attract travellers, by
lowering their rates to the advantage of the public, if not of their
employees. Now, however, when the common desire of all the
companies was to increase their rates, competition was no longer
a reality. Working agreements were concluded between several
companies, sometimes relating to rates, sometimes extending to

the speed of the trains, and sometimes enabling the companies to
divide the traffic according to a fixed proportion. Why not take
the final step? This very year 1907 the Great Northern, the Great
Central, and the Great Eastern railways were engaged in working
out a scheme of amalgamation for which in 1909 they sought in
1
T. A. Brocklebank, Mammon s Victims: A
Revelation to the Nation; A Text-Book for
Workers and Coroners, 1912, p. 7$, which on this point refers to a. pamphlet published by
John Burns in 1899.
2
Edwin A. Pratt, Railways and their Rates . , .
1906, pp. 12 sqq.
3 The Railway Dispute The Economist,
The Times, September
Ibid., p. 42; 16, 1907, ;
May n, 1907, The Railway Position*.

109
vain legal sanction.1 It was defeated by the hostility of the Labour
members. They did not object in principle to the amalgamation
of some 200 British railway companies in one large organization.
But they did not want that organization with its monopoly of the
national railway system to be a private company working to make
profit at the expense of the public and its employees

alike. In the
interest of both they demanded that the railways should be
nationalized. Until 1906 the nationalization of the railways had
been the Utopia of a few cranks. It now became a plank of the
Labour platform, passionately defended and attacked in an entire
2
series of articles and pamphlets.
Nationalization however did not figure among the claims
which the Railwayman s Unions put forward in 1907 and which
they termed the national programme They were content to .
demand reductions of hours and increases of wages. They asked

for a regular eight-hours day for certain classes of workers, a ten-
hours day for the rest, and a minimum rest of nine hours between
the work of two consecutive days, the laying down of definite
conditions for overtime work, an immediate increase of two
shillings in the wages of all men working more than eight hours
a day, and an additional three shillings a day for all employed in
the London stations. 3 These were the demands which they invited
the companies to discuss With their representatives and this last
request was itself a claim, more important perhaps than those con
tained in the programme. The railwaymen called upon the rail
way companies to follow the example of the coalowners and tex
tile manufacturers and
recognize the Union leaders freely chosen
by the men as their authorized representatives. Where that prac-
1
See the debates H. of C., April 5, 1909 (Parliamentary Debates, Commons, 1909, 5th
Series, vol.iii, pjx 798 sqq.). The amalgamation was sanctioned in principle but the clauses
were never discussed and the entire question referred to a select committee which reported
in the Departmental Committee on Railway Agreements and Amalgamations,
ipll (Report of
April ii, 1911).
*
For nationalization: William Cunningham, Railway Nationalisation, 1906; Clement
Edwards, Railway Nationalisation, 1898, 2nd edition revised with preface by Sir Charles
Dilke, 1907; G. L. Wardle, Railway Nationalisation, 1908; W. Bolland, The Railways and
the Nation, Problems and Possibilities, 1909; Emil Davies, State Purchase of-Railways, Fabian
Tract No. 550, 1910; Nationalisation of Railways, 2nd edition, 1911; The Case for Railway
Nationalisation, I.L.P. Pamphlet, 1912. Against: Edwin A. Pratt, State Railways, 1907;
Railways and their Rates with an appendix on the British Coal Problem, 1903 ; Railway Nationali
sation, 1908. For arguments on both sides see the debates H, of C., February 11, 1908;
G. A. Hardy s motion (Part Deb., 4th Ser., vol. cbocxiii, pp. 1612 sqq.); Lloyd George s
speech (ibid., pp. 1637 sqq.).
a
The programme is reproduced in full in Charles Watney and James A. Little, Industrial
Warfare, The Aims and Claims of Capital and Labour, 1912, pp. 55-7.
110
tice had been adopted what bad results had followed? Did not the
chairman of the Amalgamated Society, Richard Bell, show as
much wisdom and moderation as the officials of the miners and
textile workers unions? Indeed, his moderation went so far that
he refused to join the Labour party, a refusal which provoked an
organized opposition in his Union, led by a young Welshman,
J.
H. Thomas. The companies, however, refused to negotiate
with the Union officials. They regarded themselves as a public
service in which the interest of the community required a military
discipline. The weapon employed by the Union was the strike or
its threat; to
recognize the Union would be to recognize implicitly
the lawfulness of a general strike in so important a national service.
Itwas a strange argument in the mouths of men who obstinately
opposed nationalization of the railways. And it was brought for
ward at a particularly inopportune moment, since the Postmaster-
General under the new Liberal Cabinet, Sydney Buxton, had just
recognized the Postal Clerks Association, The directors of the
great companies stood firm. The Railwayman s Union, they said,
represented only a minority of their employees, less than 100,000
out of some 600,000. Why should this minority be given the right
to speak on behalf of all the railwaymen? 1 The railwaymen re
plied by contesting the directors figures. The total number of

men employed by the companies, eligible for membership of the
Amalgamated Society, did not exceed 200,000. Half of these were
therefore already members and the number was continually in
creasing. It had almost doubled during the last five years. Why
should it
again during the next five? Nor had
not double itself
the companies any right to regard the railwaymen who were not
members of the Union as its convinced enemies. The vast majority
consisted of shirkers, only too glad to let others fight their battles.
But this did not alter the fact that when Richard Bell presented
the national programme he was not yet supported by compact
battalions. Not only had his Union much leeway to make up
before its organization equalled that of the great Mining and
Textile Unions. The railwayman s forces were also divided among
several Unions. There were separate Unions for Scotland and
Ireland. There was a separate Union for the unskilled workers.
There was a Railway Clerks Association founded in 1897 to
contain all the clerical workers. And above all there had been in
1
Tlie Economist, September 21, 1907; The Times, September and October 1907.
VOL vi 6 . Ill
existence 1880 an Associated Society of Locomotive
since
Engineers and Firemen, a wealthy and compact Union of the

engine drivers and mechanics, concerned only with the interests
of its own group and extremely conservative. It stood resolutely
apart. On the other hand, the companies did not present a solid
front. An association of companies had indeed been formed to
consult on the best methods of defending their common interests.
But among the great companies one, at least, the North-Eastern,
separated itself from the others on the vital question of recognizing
the Union. In short, when for the first time on all the railways of
the United Kingdom employers and men were arrayed in battle
against each other, the concentration of their respective forces was
still in
progress. It had not yet been completed.
Bell, assisted by two expert economists, published a large
volume of statistics dealing with the conditions of labour on the
railways. The companies replied to his green book by a red
book in which they tried to disprove his figures. They also pub
lished a pamphlet denouncing the national programme and all
it stands for which Bell answered in a counter-pamphlet entitled
,
The Railwaymens Charter. But the conflict did not stop at a war
of pamphlets. In March, the House of Commons adopted a motion
which declared the hours of work on the railways excessive, de
manded a stricter execution of the existing laws and the passage
of new legislation, if the existing statutes were proved to be in
1
adequate. In May, Lloyd George, making use of the powers con
ferred upon him by an Act of 1889, called upon the companies to
submit to him an account of all the days of more than twelve
hours worked by their staffs during the preceding month and
announced his intention to repeat the demand every three months.
n
On May the railwaymen, encouraged by these expressions of
sympathy by the majority in Parliament and the Board of Trade, e
organized a mass meeting to present the national programme .
There was anxiety on the Stock Exchange. Railway shares fell

two and a half to five points. And the anxiety increased when on
September 15 the Committee of the Union announced its inten
tion to take a vote of its members on the question of a strike.
Since the companies persisted in their refusal to recognize the
Union, the vote was taken. Lord Claud Hamilton, Chairman of
1
H. of C., March 6, 1907, Harvey s motion (Parliamentary Debates, 4th Scries, vol. clxx,
pp. 885 sqq.).
112
the Great Eastern Railway, caused widespread indignation by a
manifesto in which he denounced not only the Amalgamated
Society of Railway Servants but trade-unionism as a whole and
maintained that war had been openly declared upon individualism
by the Socialist forces. When at the close of October the result of
the voting became known it
appeared that 76,925 votes had been
given in favour of striking, only 8,773 against it.
It was at this point that Lloyd George intervened, determined
to prevent a strike. No doubt from the outset he had good reason
to feel confident that the negotiations he was undertaking would
have a favourable issue. Among the companies and their suppor
ters Lord Claud s intemperate language was not generally ap
proved. In these circles, as in the House of Lords, it was clearly

understood how dangerous it was from the political standpoint
to arouse the hostility of the working class. On the other hand,
the Union, or at least the Committee, was not sufficiently certain
of victory really to desire a strike. Though the General Railway
Workers Union had joined the movement and had voted almost
unanimously for the strike, the Society of Locomotive Engineers
and Firemen had adopted a totally different attitude, refusing even
to take part in the referendum. Finally, a way out of the impasse
was found. The authorized representatives of the companies did
not meet the authorized representatives of the Union, but both in
turn met Lloyd George and his assistants at the Board of Trade,
and the agreement worked out at these separate meetings was
separately signed by the authorized representatives of both par
ties. The Union was recognized without being
recognized. The
actual agreement was conceived in the same spirit. It did not
settle the question of hours and wages but referred them for settle
ment to an entirely new organization set up for conciliation and
arbitration Hitherto, the men had to present their grievances to
.
the head of their department. He in turn referred the matter,
though not until he thought fit, to a board on which the employees

were in a minority; and there was no appeal from the decision at
which he arrived after consultation with the board. In future
there would be an entire hierarchy of conciliation boards at
which both sides would be equally represented. The men s repre
sentatives must be employees of the company s. The board would
sit twice a month. From the boards which dealt with disputes in
the first instance an appeal lay to sectional boards and from these
113
in turn to a central board*. And if the men were still unsatisfied
by its demand that the dispute should be

decision, they could
referred to an umpire. The Union was not actually recognized, for
the provision that the members of the board must be employees
excluded its committees. But the latter could use their constantly
increasing authority to secure that all the men representatives

s
on the boards were union men and the settlement undoubtedly

constituted for the railwaymen a considerable advance on their
previous position. Moreover it could be denounced
only by a
previous notice of twelve months and in any case not for six
years. Peace
was thus ensured until the end of 1914* .
16
By his Merchant Shipping and Patent Acts Lloyd George had

made himself popular with the shipowners and manufacturers.
his striking and skilful intervention in the railway dispute he
By
established a reputation for statesmanship both with politicians
of
every party and in the world of business. A month later he again
intervened in a trade dispute and won another victory. Among
the Lancashire cotton spinners, on the whole better paid than they
had ever been, the fine spinners of Oldham complained that their
wages were too low in proportion to those received by their
fellow spinners and claimed their share of the considerable increase
of wages in their branch of the industry. In vain they attempted to
negotiate. The millowners refused even to consider their claims,
which they denounced as a breach of the Brooklands Agreement.
The spinners on their side announced their intention to take a
referendum of the Union on the question of a strike. Lloyd George
made a personal visit to Manchester and, though he did not suc
ceed in his apparent desire to be appointed umpire, he was at
least successful, in
overcoming the millowners obstinacy and
persuading them to agree to a joint meeting of owners and opera
tives. At die
opening of December an agreement was concluded
which, though it did not grant the operatives
everything they
had asked, raised their
wages by 9 per cent, an increase of from
3
For the struggle see Strikes and Lock-outs: Board of Trade (Labour Department), Report on
Strikesand Lock-outs in the United Kingdom 1907, 1908, pp. 49 sqq.; Lord Askwith, Industrial
Problems and Disputes, 1920, pp. 113 sqq.; M. Alfassa, Une Solution nouvelle des Conflit$,
1908
114
five shillings to six shillings a week. Some 8,000 operatives bene
fited by this quasi-arbitral award. 1
A third success followed, two months later. Its field was the
engineering and shipbuilding industry. The agitation began in the
Clyde dockyards and among the carpenters known as the
White Squad in contrast to the Black Squad, the iron and steel
workers. A year earlier they had considered a strike for higher
wages. Now they were on the defensive, refusing to accept a
reduction accepted by the Black Squad. Four thousand men went
on strike and as they were receiving strike pay from the General
Federation of Trade Unions, the employers threatened to reply to
the strike by a lock-out in all the industries of the district whose
employees were affiliated to the Federation. The Union Execu
tive advised submission. The strikers refused, and the strike spread
to the important Amalgamated Society of Engineers. The Society,
which had been reconstituted and had gathered new strength after
its defeat in 1897, had just concluded a
comprehensive and detailed
agreement for the amicable settlement on an equal footing of all
disputes between employers and men in the engineering industry.
The workers refused to agree to wage reductions, accepted, in
accordance with the terms of the agreement, by the local commit
tees of the Union. If partial concessions made by the employers
on the Clyde, they did not satisfy the
satisfied the engineers
engineerson the Tyne where 12,000 went on strike. Once again

Lloyd George offered the services of the Board of Trade, and on
February 20, 1908, had the satisfaction of seeing the terms of a
provisional settlement accepted by Sir Andrew Noble, the em
2
ployers representative, and the representatives of the Unions.
By the force of his personality/ The Economist wrote, Mr.
Lloyd George has made his office transcend the statutory duties
imposed upon it. Three times within a few months Mr. George
has successfully settled disputes in the largest industries of the
country, and in each case averted a disturbance to trade which
would have spread beyond the immediate area affected. 3 The
agitation did not in fact cease immediately either on the railways
or in the cotton industry. The struggle was still continued by the
1 The Economist, December 7, 1907; Strikes and Lock-outs: Board of Trade (Labour Depart
ment) Report on Strikes and Lock-outs . .in 1907, pp. 55 scjq.
,
8 The
Economist, February 8, 22, 1908; Strikes and Lock-outs: Board of Trade (Labour
Department) Report on Strikes and Lock-outs .
. .in 1908, pp. 41 sqq.
a
The Economist, February 29, 1908.
115
carpenters on the Clyde, and among the engineers of the Clyde

and Tyne the strike broke out afresh in spite of the efforts of the
men s leaders. If, nevertheless, after a longer or shorter interval
the policy of compromise finally prevailed, it was due not so
much to the skilful handling of Lloyd George, as to the unfavour
able condition of trade, the crisis into which British industry was
suddenly plunged.
The crisis did not originate in Great Britain nor was it most
acute there. It was the repercussion of a crisis which had occurred
in the two countries the United States and
Germany which
were now the most progressive industrial nations of the world.
In those countries the progress of industry had been so
rapid once
the difficulties of 1902 had been overcome that
they had not only
ceased to export their iron and steel to Great Britain but
actually
imported British iron and steel. Now, however, a new glut had
been produced, first in the United States, then in Germany.
Money became scarce, manufacturers went bankrupt, banks
failed. Not only were the American and German markets closed
to British goods, but the British market was once more threatened
with dumping. Prices fell steadily from a maximum in May 1907,
until the end of the year, when for the first time for
many years
the general price level was lower than the
year before. In April
1908 prices reached their lowest level, but as winter succeeded
autumn and the year 1909 opened no perceptible rise had taken
place. As before in 1902 but with greater anxiety, men were ask
ing whether the of prices witnessed for several years had not
rise
been temporary phenomenon and a new period of low
after all a
prices and industrial stagnation were not beginning for Britain,

for Europe, indeed for the entire world. The
hopes of the tariff
reformers revived, and a few by-elections won
by Unionists
seemed to sanction their optimism. The workers, on the other
hand, lost heart. They had failed to take advantage of the boom
in trade when it set in at the turn of the
century; they had been
defeated by so many unsuccessful strikes and adverse decisions of
the courts. The Election of January 1906 and the
passing of the
Trade Disputes Bill had restored their confidence. Must
they now
promise? We
witness the sudden check of a movement so full of
7
may say at once that the tariff reformers hopes were speedily dis
appointed. For they depended on the trade depression. And from
March 1909 prices began once more to rise, and trade revived.
116
After a year in which exports and imports had achieved a record,
only 1908 had witnessed a diminution of foreign trade. The
figures
for 1909 were already improving, those for 1910 would
exceed the record established in 1907 and the expansion of trade
would continue until the eve of the Great War. The improve
ment was due in part to an. increase in the amount of exports and
imports, in part to an increase in their value. In the decade from
1904 to 1914 prices rose by 22 per cent. This was undoubtedly
because of a fall in the value of gold. A similar phenomenon had
occurred about the middle of the nineteenth century following on
the discovery and development of the Californian goldfields. Sub
sequently, these goldfields had become exhausted and the fall of

prices had
been so rapid that to remedy the scarcity of gold econo
mists had advocated bimetallism. Now, however, new methods
of gold mining had been invented by which the ore could be
extracted from beds at a deeper level, and the more these were
perfected the greater became the number of beds not only in

South Africa but in North America and Australia where gold
existed in sufficient quantities to be worth mining. In a work pub
lished in 1912 the economist Layton pointed out that since 1896
gold had been mined to the value of ^1,000,000,000 sterling, four

times the amount mined during the first fifty years of the nine
teenth century and almost half the total stocks of gold available. 1
The formidable dislocations of currency we have experienced of
recent years have made us forget those of the period before the
war. The latter would have been more severe than they were if
Asia on the one hand, the United States on the other, had not
absorbed far larger quantities of gold than had been expected.
Even so, they were sufficiently serious to cause anxiety to a con
siderable number of expert economists and induce them to inquire
whether some other standard of exchange should not be substi
tuted for gold, lacking as it did the indispensable stability. And
the workers enrolled under the banner of the trade unions after
the discouragement and hesitation of the winter of 1907-8 re
newed their campaign with even greater vigour, demanding by
strikes or threats of striking their share in the increasing pros
perity of trade, and calling upon Parliament to pass new legisla

tion to protect the interests of their class.
Layton, An Introduction to the Study of Prices with special

1 Walter T.
reference to the History
of the Nineteenth Century, 1912, pp. 83-4.
117
What then, everything considered, was the political situation

when Parliament met at the opening of February 1908 ? The
Government s
majority, slightly reduced by a few by-elections
won by Labour or Unionist candidates, was still practically speak
ing as overwhelming as it had been two years earlier. But the
Conservative Opposition, impotent in the Commons, possessed
in the Lords a permanent
majority as large as that which since
1906 the Radicals had possessed in the Lower House. The entire
strategy of thetwo official leaders of the Unionist party, Balfour
and Lord Lansdowne, consisted in using the House of Lords as an
instrument to exert a permanent pressure on the Liberal
majority,
by rejecting among the Bills sent up to it all those and no more
which it could safely reject without endangering the popularity
of the party in the present House of Commons and ruining its
chances at the next Election The Irish question did not come be
fore the House of Lords, since Irish intransigence had
brought the
Irish Council Bill to a premature demise. Asquith s
budgets, to
which we shall return later, prudently democratic, very economi
cal, and always disposing of a surplus, were universally
popular
after years of extravagance. Moreover, was it not
accepted that
in finance the House of Commons was absolute master and that
for the House of Lords financial
questions did not even exist?
There remained the question of religious education in the schools.
Also the question of Labour legislation.
Undeniably the House of
Lords during the last two sessions in handling these two
problems
had taken skilful advantage of the power conferred
upon it by
constitutional custom to sift the Bills sent
up by the Liberal
Government.
On the Education Bill the victory had undeniably lain with the
Lords. The Cabinet never retrieved the defeat it had suffered at
the close of 1906. Admittedly, it did not dare to dissolve Parlia
ment and appeal to the electorate to
implement its desire to satisfy
the Nonconformist claims. It was obvious that the nation had no
No doubt the Government continued to
interest in their claims.
announce by the mouth of the Premier or one of his subordinates
that it had prepared all its
plans to alter the constitution on the
first
opportunity and in particular to curtail the powersr of the
118
House of Lords, Would it dissolve on this issue itself? It had no
intention of doing so. A
conflict must first be provoked between
the two Houses on some other question better adapted than the
question of religious education in the schools, to arouse popular
feeling. Should it be the question of reforming the franchise? In
1906 the Government had attempted to carry a Bill to abolish the
plural vote which by enabling wealthy voters to vote during the
same election under different qualifications in several constituen
cies benefited the Unionist party. The House of Lords had thrown
out the Bill without a debate, refusing to pronounce on the ques
tion until a measure dealing comprehensively with the franchise
as a whole was sent up. Should the Government accept the chal
lenge and bring forward such a measure? Should it attempt to

make Great Britain a country of universal suffrage in the full
sense of the term by giving every citizen an equal vote and
equalizing the constituencies? It was however far from certain in

1908 that a reform of this kind would arouse popular enthusiasm.
Compactly organized in their unions the workers had secured
under the existing franchise, in spite of the fact that it was not
yet universal, the passage of the Trade Disputes Bill with a mosr
significant speed. Surely they would be well advised, instead of
waiting for a reform of the franchise, to obtain from Parliament,
as at present elected, further legislation from which they would
reap immediate and practical benefit? A measure, for example

establishing a system of workers old age pensions. Chamberlain
had promised it but had broken his promise. Was it not a duty
this breach of
strictly incumbent upon the Liberal party to repair
faith by setting up that system of universal old age pensions with
out contribution from the workers which the Trade Union Con
gress demanded every summer? Or again
a statute or body of
statutes ensuring the workers against unemployment? The
suggestion had been put forward in 1902 and 1903, when industry
was suffering from a depression that was almost a crisis, and the
Unionist Cabinet had even taken some steps in this direction,
though they did not amount to very much. Now, when a severe
industrial depression once more prevailed, more serious than that
of 1902, the workers demands became more insistent. In 1902
John Burns had criticized the Government s attitude. What would
he do at present when he was President of the Local Government
Board?
119
The speech from which opened the new session at
the throne
the close of January 1908 gave the most prominent place to the
question of old age pensions for workmen. But would it provide
the opportunity for a victorious battle with the Lords? Would
not the reform be carried too easily, because the Unionist Party
and the Lords would vie in its
support with the Liberal majority
in theCommons ? This indeed had been the tactics pursued by the
Lords for the last two years. They had accepted the Workmen s
Insurance Act and the Trade Disputes Bill, yielding, like the
ministerialists themselves, to the pressure of the working masses
from outside, officially represented in the House of Commons by
a tiny group of fifty members. The Church of England, whose
stronghold was the House of Lords, had adopted the same tactics,
and the bench of bishops had been careful to dissociate itself from
the attacks upon Socialism delivered by politicians, whether
Liberal or Conservative, provided the Socialism in question were
not hostile to the family or the Christian religion. The Liberal
leaders therefore found themselves in a quandary. They were
faced with the problem of devising a measure of social legislation
whose effects would be so far-reaching that the House of Lords
could neither accept without humiliation, nor reject it without
it
imperilling prerogatives and even its existence. After two years

its
of Liberal legislation one fact at least was established beyond

doubt. The Election of 1906, on the surface a victory of free trade,
and apparently a Nonconformist victory, had been in reality and
at bottom a victory of the proletariat.
120
CHAPTER II
Foreign Policy:
The Army and Navy
I FROM THE CONFERENCE OF ALGECIRAS
TO THE ANGLO-RUSSIAN AGREEMENT
understand how the international situation was regarded
TO 1906
by
we must
Government and people at the opening of
the British
begin by speaking not of England, but of

Germany, the leading Continental nation, whose power focused
the attention, of all the other nations, and had
begun to create
universal anxiety. What had been for more than
thirty years the
guiding principle of German foreign policy? At first, when Bis
marck was at the helm, Germany s sole desire was to consolidate
in peace the unity
conquered within a few years by two wars,
startling alike in their speed and decisive results. She had pursued
a policy ungenerous to be sure, but not in the least aggressive,
selfish but
prudent. Friendly towards all the powers, even France,
if Francewould accept her friendship, she was content to foster
theirmutual rivalries in order to prevent the formation of such a
coalition as had previously been fatal to the French hegemony.
Then William II had succeeded to the throne, had dismissed
Bismarck and soon inaugurated a more ambitious programme.
He wished to give Germany a strong navy. His policy had there
fore been anti-British. He had entertained the dream of uniting
under his overlordship all the nations of Europe to challenge
Britain s naval supremacy. His grandiose project had been defeated
by the opposition of France and, while still hoping to resume it at

some later date when France had forgotten the loss of Alsace and
he had completed the construction of his fleet, he had returned
temporarily to Bismarck s policy of prudence. It had been
completely successful so long as the Boer War continued. Now,
however, when the war was at an end and England no longer
preoccupied with South Africa, the British Government had
inaugurated the new policy of an entente cordiale with France. How
121
FOREIGN POLICY: THE ARMY AND NAVY
could Germany apply to this entente, which upset all the traditions
of European diplomacy, the old principles which had given
Europe thirty years of peace, herself thirty years of steadily in
creasing power? Alternatively, what new principles should she
adopt? To the men who decided German foreign policy the
change of Government in England in December 1905 was a
welcome augury.
The Tangier episode a few months before had been her first
attempt to break the Anglo-French entente, scarcely a year old, and

detach France from England by demonstrating the dangers and
humiliations to which her friendship with England exposed her.
Delcasse had fallen, at a nod from the Emperor William, and in
January the powers were to meet, at Germany s request, to restrict
the freedom Britain had undertaken to bestow on France in
Morocco, thus inflicting indirectly on the British Government an
abasement almost equal to that suffered by the French. But at this
very moment Balfour and Lord Lansdowne disappeared from the
scene and their successors so it was hoped in the Wilhelmstrasse
would be well placed to abandon without the humiliation of a
retreat the principles on which their predecessors policy had
been based. Moreover, the new cabinet was a Liberal cabinet, in
which the pro-Boers of yesterday seemed the preponderating
element.
Morley, whose creed was peace at any price, and who in 1898
had broken with the official Liberal party because in his opinion
its
opposition to Chamberlain s imperialism was too feeble, came
back in triumph. Bryce, like Morley, an old Gladstonian, was the
historian of the Teutonic Holy Roman Empire and the American
Republic, an intellectual Protestant whose sympathies were

with the Teutonic rather than the Latin peoples. Sir Robert Reid,
now Chancellor under the title of Lord Loreburn, shared this
point of view. So did John Burns, an inveterate enemy of France,
whose authority in the cabinet was indeed far less than Morley s or
Bryce s but who was highly respected by the middle class. Every
one regarded Haldane as the typical pro-German. Finally, the
Prime Minister, Campbell-Bannerman, had shown himself
throughout the Boer War the determined foe of a bellicose policy.
He was, it is true, anything but an enemy of France. He was a
lover of French culture, and an enthusiastic reader of Fjrench
novels, more capable than any British premier for many a long
122
ALGECIRAS TO ANGLO-RUSSIAN AGREEMENT
year of addressing in excellent French delegations from across the

Channel who were given an official reception in London. But he
wanted the reconciliation with France to be the prelude to a
general reconciliation with all the European powers, Germany
first of all. The overwhelming victory the Liberal
party had won
in the January Election had visibly augmented his influence from
this point of view, both in the Cabinet and the House. That vic
tory indeed was due to the numerous domestic issues we have

already studied. But it signified also, many observers would have
said first and foremost, that the entire nation workers, business
men, and intelligentsia was weary of the aggressive imperialism
which ten years earlier had brought the revived Conservative
party into power. To please the crowds one must no longer talk
of conquests, colonial expansion, national honour.
Howthen are we to explain the fact that after the revolution at
the polls ofJanuary 1906 British foreign policy remained exactly
what it had been before? In the first place we must remember the
influence exercised within the Cabinetby the imperialist group.
Itsmembers had secured offices of exceptional importance. They
were younger, more brilliant, and everyone expected them to be
more active than such veterans as Morley, Bryce or Campbell-
Bannerman. It was their conviction, a conviction proclaimed
emphatically more than once by Lord Rosebery, that the foreign

policy of the United Kingdom must be continuous unaffected
,
by the vicissitudes of the party struggle; and the prudent Asquith

and the restless Haldane, who dressed his window with German
goods but sold merchandise of a very different character, gave

wholehearted support to the new Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward
Grey, who was himself the more ready to continue the policy of
an understanding with France, because he had been one of its first
advocates, even before the Unionist Cabinet and the officials at
the Foreign Office had perceived its advantages. Finally we must
not forget the presence of King Edward at the head of the execu
tive. Despite the constitutional fiction that the monarch must
always conform his personal views to those of his responsible

ministers, public opinion saw in him the true author of the entente
cordiak. It was believed that the strong dislike he entertained for
his nephew, the Emperor William, entered into his desire to see
England follow an anti-German policy, that he was using his
influence to complete the Anglo-French entente by an under-
123
standing with Russia, and that it was on his recommendation and

with this end in view that Sir Charles Hardinge had been appoin
ted Ambassador at Petersburg and returned to London in January
1906 to become permanent Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs. 1
We must not, however, exaggerate the part played by any

individual, whether Grey at the Foreign Office or King Edward
on the throne. We have already had occasion to call attention to
the fact that King Edward had been reigning for two years before
he perceived the necessity to substitute for the policy of friendship
with Germany a policy of friendship with France. In reality, he
guided neither public opinion nor the policy of the Foreign Office.
He simply made up his mind towards the end of 1902 to follow
the lead given by both. Thenceforward he had the good fortune
to make himself useful by actions which at the same time made
him popular. A lover of travel and public ceremonies, he was the
itinerant ambassador of the Foreign Office, its super-ambassador .
But he was nothing more than an agent and never initiated a

policy which could be called with truth, as it was so often without
justification, King Edward s policy. The case of Sir Edward Grey
is different, if his conversion to the new foreign policy really
1
From this it was a short step to regard Edward VII as a man of genius, who operated
behind the scenes the machinery of British foreign policy, and many people both in
France and Germany took it. See Rudolf Marten, Kaiser Wilhelm II undKonig Edward VII,
1907, p. 31: King Edward is the soul of British policy. . . He is England s unavowed
.
Emperor. The powerful position attributed to the German Emperor by the Prussian and
Imperial Constitution, and by constitutional custom and tradition, is occupied by the
present King of England without constitutional authority or the sanction of tradition or
custom. "Whether the Conservatives or Liberals are in office is a matter of indifference.
King Edward who stands behind both, rules p. 91: Edward VII, King of England and
;
Emperor of India, is England s secret Emperor. In him the British nation possesses for the
first time a Caesar/ Emile Flourens, La France conquise: Edouard VII et Clemenceau [1906]
(a clerical and anti-English work), p. 105: Edward VII has nothing of the commonplace
tyrant. A despot who makes his will obeyed he has made the concealment of the iron
hand in a velvet glove a fine art. He detests the manner of a despot and the pose of a
conqueror. With a subtle perception which long experience has rendered more acute he
knows the exact moment when the opposition must be crushed by brute force and he
never shrinks from employing it. But his favourite weapon is persuasion which he wields
in every conceivable shape with the dexterity of a past master. His expert knowledge of
the human heart and of the French character in particular has taught him how to use with
unerring skill the method of persuasion most appropriate to the tastes and desires of the
individual in question.
124
if he was among its origina
preceded that of the Foreign Office,
tors, and was for that reason that in December 1905 the
if it
Foreign Office wanted to have him as its chief. But when this has
been granted, we must not misconceive Grey s political calibre.
He was not of the lineage of Canning and Palmerston, one of
those men with an innate genius for diplomatic intrigue and the
manipulation of public opinion, whohappy only in their

are
office, as the ideal sea captain is
happy only on the poop of his ship.
The ten years of Unionist government had been for him ten years
of repose, during which he had performed, not too strenuously,
the ritual of an opposition speaker. When he achieved the summit
of his ambition he found himself, as it were, caught in the
wheels of the formidable machine he had hoped to control and
carried along by them. Even the loss in 1906 of a wife with whom
he had lived in a close communion of tastes and ideas did not
plunge him in despair into a maelstrom of activity. On the con
trary, we receive the impression of a weary and disillusioned
man.
He continued a lover of the country, a student of bird life who
looked forward the entire week to the week-end which would
allow him to forget the affairs of Europe and escape to his beloved
nature. And phlegmatic temper which had nothing in com
this
mon with the temperament of a Canning, a Palmerston and still

lessof a Chamberlain explains the fact that he was able to pursue
the newpolicy which had been followed by the Foreign Office
for the past two or three years with the utmost possible modera
tion. He appears indeed to have given it an interpretation pre
dominantly negative, and his object was not so much an alliance

with a particular European power against Germany as to prevent
Germany from forming such an alliance against England. If,
therefore, the Foreign Office sought on occasion to draw too
close the bonds uniting Britain with her new friends, and his
colleagues were alarmed from time to time by the prospect of the

conflictswith Germany which the British foreign policy might
involve, Sir Edward was just the right person to mediate between
the Cabinet and the Foreign Office, and blur the features of the
new policy without ever giving it up. Moreover, the balance of
power which was his political creed of its very nature excluded a
permanent with one power against another, since the
alliance
forces in Europe required that
shifting equilibrium of national
should as far as possible remain free to transfer her weight
England
from one scale to the other. 1 And since Chamberlain s

imperialism
had been deliberately hostile to France and Russia, the
until 1902
subsequent change of friendships could be interpreted in two

different ways. It might be regarded as a new orientation of
British imperialism, and it was in this sense that it was understood
by Asquith, Haldane, and Grey himself. Or it could be interpreted
as an entire
repudiation of the preceding imperialism, and it was
because it was that it escaped the censure of
presented in this light
the Gladstonian veterans in the Cabinet. Assisted by so many
favourable circumstances, Grey managed to acquire in a few
months an amazing prestige not only in England but on the
2
Continent, and the candour, honesty, and entire disinterestedness
to which everyone paid tribute invested a policy often ambiguous
with the halo of his personal honour. 8
In any case there can be no question of King Edward s policy,
or Sir Edward Grey s, if by that is meant a policy imposed upon
the Foreign Office or even suggested to it by either. There was
a policy of the Foreign Office with which the private views of the
King and the Foreign Secretary happened to coincide. It was in

truth the policy which circumstances dictated and against which
they would have attempted in vain to rebel. The Germans Sir ,
Edward wrote with truth, do not realize that England has always
drifted or deliberately gone into opposition to any Power which
establishes her hegemony in Europe/
4
We have already witnessed
1
So long as England remains faithful to the general principle of the preservation of the
balance of power, her interests would not be served by Germany being reduced to the
rank of a weak Power, as this might easily lead to a Franco-Russian predominance equally,
if not more, formidable to the British
Empire. There are no existing German rights, terri
torial or other, which this country could wish to see diminished. Therefore, so long as
Germany s action does not overstep the line of legitimate protection of existing rights,
she can always count upon the sympathy and good will, and even the moral support of
England ( Memorandum by Mr. Eyre Crowe, Foreign Office. January I, 1907;

. . .
Documents
British vol. iii, p. 417).
. , .
8
Metternich to Prince von Billow, March 23, 1909: In questions of foreign policy no
one exercises such great influence over his fellow countrymen as Sir Edward Grey. His
word is its own guarantee* (Die Grosse Politik vol. xxviii, p. 126). Daily News, Septem
, , .
ber 2, 1907: with reluctance that a Liberal newspaper criticizes the act of a minister
It is
whose personality exercises a magnetism amounting almost to fascination over the House
of Commons.
8
For Sir Edward Grey s policy see Gilbert Murray, The Foreign Policy of Sir Edward
Grey, i906-i5, 1915 (a defence with which we may contrast Hamilton Fyfe s satirical
reflections, The Making of an Optimist, 1921, p. 40); also Herman Lctz, Lord Grey und der
Weltkrieg: Bin Schliissel zum Verstandnis der britischen aemtlichen Aktenpublikation uber den
Kriegsausbruch 19U, 1927 (English translation 1928), a work which if perhaps not suffi
ciently impartial is nevertheless well documented and contains many acute psychological
observations.
*
Minute written on June 9, 1906; British Documents . , . vol. iii, p. 359.
126
and shall continue to witness Germany s efforts to break the
ententeswhich were forming around her, efforts whose sole result
will be to strengthen them until at last the circle which surrounds
her is drawn tight and firm. Indeed, Russia, France, and England
will themselves on occasion attempt to loosen the framework of
the new system. In vain:
it will resist all
attempts to destroy or
weaken cannot conceive the statesman of genius or the
it. "We
master stroke of policy that during these critical years could have
diverted the fatal course of events. The system was Europe s auto
matic reply to the growth of German power.
Picture the situation in January 1906. The Conference of Alge-

ciras was about to meet to determine the future status of Morocco
by a common agreement between all the signatories of the con
vention of Madrid, England, however, was in the throes of a
General Election. The newspapers wrote of nothing else, and the
Ministers had not even the leisure to hold a Cabinet Council.
Every Minister had his hands full, courting the voters in his con
stituency half the week, and getting into touch with the business
of his department the rest of the time. Sir Edward Grey, however,
while assuring the German ambassador that the policy of friend
ship with France pursued by the Foreign Office for the last three
years implied no distrust of Germany, expressed his personal con
viction that, if Germany made the question of Morocco a pretext
for declaring war on France, British public opinion would not
allow the Government to remain neutral, and even, if we may
believe Metternich, expressed himself in plainer terms than Lord
Lansdowne had used six months before. 1 On the other hand, it
would seem that the Liberal victory at the polls exceeded his ex
pectation and made him doubt whether under any Circumstances
the British public would entertain the prospect of war. And on
January 31 he advised the French Ambassador, Paul Cambon,
to that effect. 2 And King Edward himself seems to have been im-
1
Sir Edward Grey to Sir F. Lascelles, January 9, 1906 (British Documents . . vol. iii, pp.
vol. xxi, 1
309-10) ; Metternich to Prince von BUlow, January 3,1906 (Die Grosse Politik . . .
pp. 47-50).
*
Sir Edward Grey to Sir F. Bertie, January 31, 1906 (British Documents . . . vol. iii, pp.
1 80 sqq.) especially p. 181: M Cambon must remember that England at the present
127
pressed by the vigorous disavowal by the electorate of imperialism

in any shape or form. On
January 23 he wrote to the Emperor
William in extremely cordial terms suggesting a meeting in the
near future and offering his services as mediator to settle by an
amicable compromise the dispute between France and Germany
in Morocco.
But the Kaiser s reply, though couched in polite language, was
a flat refusal of the proffered mediation. 1 The purpose of his action
at Tangier had been to prevent England from acting as arbitrator
in Morocco. It was not for him to give way eight months later.
The King of England and his ministers had therefore no option
but to give the French claims unreserved diplomatic support, to
which indeed they were pledged by the agreement of April 1904.
A journalist, Sir Donald Mackenzie Wallace, was the King s pri
vate agent at Algeciras; Sir Arthur Nicolson, the British Ambassa
dor at Madrid, the official representative of the Government. The
Cabinet allowed the King to give British support the same thea
trical
setting as a year earlier. On
his way to Biarritz he stopped
at Paris. He
visited the President, Loubet s successor, Fallieres,
ignored the Prime Minister, and had a long interview in a private

house with Delcassd The conversation was a significant step eight
months after Delcasse s fall and four months after the indiscreet
revelations of the Parisian press which, even if not accepted as
reliable in every detail, had implanted in every country in Europe
the firm belief that military measures against Germany had been
concerted between England and France the previous spring.
What were these French claims which England pledged herself
to support? By the very fact of going to Algeciras, France admit
ted that she had been wrong in not asking all the signatories of the
Madrid Convention to sanction her establishment of a quasi-pro-
tectorate in Morocco. But she intended to seek that sanction and
the sole difference between her intentions in 1904 and the demand
she put forward now was that the more-or-less avowed
protec
torate for which she asked would be exercised under the control
of the powers, would be a mandate conferred upon her by them
moment would be most reluctant to find herself engaged in a great war, and I hesitated to
express a decided opinion as to whether the strong feeling of the Press and of public
opinion on the side of France would be strong enough to overcome the great reluctance
which existed amongst us now to find ourselves involved in war.
1
King Edward to the Emperor William, January 23 the Emperor William to King
;
Edward, February 5 (Die Crosse Politik . . vol. xxi 1 , pp. 108 sqq.). Cf. William II s obser
.
vations on a telegram from Count Bernstorff of 16

January (ibid., p. 95).
128
and subject to certain conditions ensuring more effectively than
the agreement of 1904 freedom of trade for all nations. To this
programme Germany opposed a system of complete inter

nationalization under which no power, least of all France, could
enjoy a privileged position. was the system the European powers

It
had attempted to set

up Macedonia a few months before, and
in
whose failure was already reported. Alone among the powers of
Europe, Germany had refused to agree to it. In Morocco the
position was reversed. But in both instances the German Govern
ment was pursuing the same policy. Champion in its own interest
of the independence of the Mediterranean powers, it regarded the
installationof an international police force in Macedonia as a vio
lation of the Sultan s sovereignty which it sought to maintain un
impaired. In Morocco it was the inevitable minimum of inter

ference which it would advise the Government of Fez to accept
to avoid a worse fate. 1 Between the two proposals compromise
was impossible. If before the Conference France and Germany
could have reached an understanding for the settlement of the
Moroccan question, how quickly its work would have been com
pleted And how much time would have been gained for the
!
pacification of Europe But Berlin had rejected all the proposals

!
for an agreement whether official or unofficial which had been

received from Paris after Delcasse s fall. Was it because the Ger
man Emperor and his Chancellor were deliberately hostile to the
French policy in Morocco ? A year after Algeciras, when a leading
French statesman renewed the proposal already made in the
autumn of 1905 that French control in Morocco should be
recognized in return for compensation in some other part of
Africa the Congo for example the Emperor William replied
that he was not opposed to French suzerainty in Morocco, that
e
he did not even want any compensation: what he wanted was an

alliance 2 He thus revealed the secret of his policy, as he had
.
already revealed it to the Czar Nicholas in August 1905 at their

Bjorkoe conversations. The Emperor s policy, which among other
1
For German attempts to effect an understanding between the Sultans see the strange
rumours reported from Constantinople by Sir N. O Connor on February 12 (British
Documents . . . vol. iii, p. 248).
2
The Emperor William to Prince von Biilow, June 16, 1907 (Die Grosse Politik . . , vol.
xxii, pp. 571 sqq.). conversation and the rumours current on the
For this subject see the
interesting details intwo despatches from Sir F. Bertie to his Government, September 12
1907, and the minute, dated the i6th, attached to the first of these (British Documents . .
[
vol. vi. p. 55 sqq.).

faults sufferedfrom his inability to state it openly on the eve of
the Algeciras Conference, was to effect through die mediation of
the Russian Government an understanding between France and
Germany which would be understood by everyone as a breach
with England,
No French statesman dared risk such a policy and the only
effect the German Government produced at Paris by suggestions
of this kind, implied in every step it took, was to make the posi
tion of the advocates of peace difficult, and equally difficult the
position of the party, stronger than is recognized to-day, which

desired to return to the policy of settling all colonial questions
by
amicable arrangement with Germany. On the contrary, it
strengthened the party which refused to be reconciled to the loss
of Alsace and for whom hatred of Germany was the substance of
French patriotism. Moreover, while it refused to conclude a pre
liminary agreement with France, it did not even promise to abide
by the free decision of the Conference. It demanded that the
Conference should ratify its
policy of internationalization. If the
demand were refused, the German representative would leave the
Conference, and war might be the result. At the unveiling of a
monument to Moltke on October 26, 1907, the Emperor William
delivered as a toast at the banquet one of those bellicose
speeches
with which from time to time he liked to flutter Europe. A
phrase about dry powder and a whetted sword* was never for
gotten. Once more panic reigned in French political circles. In
feverish haste urgent measures were taken to renew the defences
of the eastern frontier which had been neglected for some years.
In fact, the German Government did not expect the Conference

to break down, When it instructed its representatives never to
allow Germany to appear isolated during the proceedings, it
evidently regarded its system of internationalization as the most
likely to win the approval of all the Governments concerned, with
the exception of the French. Did it not serve the interests of all the
other nations, even of Great Britain? The attitude
adopted by the
Foreign Office wore an air of paradox. To honour the pledge
given in 1904, avoid a false move in the diplomatic game, and
130
escape the snare laid by Germany by abandoning its support of

the French claim, the British Government sacrificed in Morocco
the immediate interests of British trade and industry. 1 The Ger
mans notecl with satisfaction that British opinion was not so
unanimously favourable to France as it had been at the time of the
Tangier episode. One important organ, the Manchester Guardian,
departing on this question from the bulk of the Liberal Press,
openly opposed the French point of view and the more vigorously
as the Conference protracted its sessions. At
Algeciras on February
3 Count von Tattenbach attempted to win over the British repre
sentativeand detach him from the cause of France. 2
His advances met with an extremely cold reception. Sir Arthur
Nicolson, who deliberately kept in the background, was content
to give his silent support to France, and it soon became evident
that Germany s diplomatic position was far worse than Berlin had
expected. All the powers who two years before had readily ac
quiesced in the establishment by France of a sphere of influence
in Morocco now found themselves gathered at Algeciras not of
their free will to defend their
respective rights but to obey the
summons of Germany and serve her political interests. It was
therefore Germany, not, as she had hoped, France, who found
herself the object of universal hostility. Though Italy was bound
to Germany by the Triple Alliance, which she had twice renewed,
she was also bound to France by an agreement on the question of
Morocco. And if Italian opinion could only guess the exact con
tents of the agreement, it entirely approved of its spirit. Combe s
anti-clericalism had demolished once for all the legend that France
was in league with the Vatican against the unity of Italy, and
France was extremely popular with the lower classes. To England,
Italy was bound by even closer ties. It had concluded the Triple
Alliance only with the approval, indeed almost on the advice, of
England, and if that Alliance should prove to be directed against

England, Italy, placed by her geographical condition at the mercy
1
See the remarkable communication the Foreign Office found itself obliged to transmit
on July 3, 1905, to the Manchester Chamber of Commerce: I am directed by the Marquess
of Lansdowne to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of the 26th ultimo on the subject
of the Anglo-French convention of the 1 8th of April 1904. and to state that the Board oif
Directors of the Manchester Chamber of Commerce appears to be under a misapprehen
sion in supposing that an opportunity is likely to be afforded for revising that Agreement.
The Declaration in question has been signed by the two Governments and has already
been put into execution and cannot now be altered. (British Documents .vol. iii, p. 112).
. .
a
Sir A. Nicolson to Sir Edward Grey, February 4, 1906 Documents .
(British vol. iii,
. .
p. 24.1).
fleet, would be obliged to denounce it. In Spain, the

of the British
Government s policy of agreement with France and England had
many more enemies. But France assured herself of Spanish sup
port by substituting a Franco-Spanish gendarmerie for the purely
French force of her original plan, and by its actions the Spanish
court showed its
approval of the new arrangement. At the open
ing of February the rumour was current that
King Alphonso XIII
had gone to Biarritz meet Princess Victoria-Eugenie of Batten-
to
s cousin. On March 7 the Princess was re
berg, King Edward
ceived into the Catholic Church and the English monarch came
out to Biarritz to arrange a marriage which would place an
English princess on the Spanish throne. The situation had changed
since the days, still recent, when England, loathed by all the
nations of the Continent, had offered Germany an alliance she had
refused with disdain. The Emperor William was furious. All
these Latin nations/ he wrote, miserable degenerates that they
mere weapons in the hands of England to combat German
are, are
commerce in the Mediterranean. Not only have we no friends
left, but this emasculate race, this
scrap-heap of Latin peoples,
heartily detests us. As it was in the days of the Hohenstaufens and
the House of Anjou so it is now. The Latin riff-raff betray us on
every hand and throw themselves into the arms of England, which
intends to use them against us/ And as though he had entertained the
dream ofa pan-Teutonic alliance, he added War between Teutons
:
and Latins on the entire front. And the former, alas, are divided/ 1
In Russia, England had many foes; the Anglo-French entente,
concluded in the midst of the war with Japan, was unpopular.
William II and Biilow therefore hoped to find in Russia support
policy. But even the statesmen most hostile
for their anti-British
to England Count Witte at their head pressed a conciliatory
policy upon the Emperor. For in the first place they knew that
Russia, ruined by the defeat and revolution, had more need than
ever of French money. And in fact the Russian Government
would soon be rewarded for not refusing France its diplomatic
support by a loan trie French banks and, for the first time, the
London banks would take up. And the loan would enable her to
defeat the revolution. 2 And secondly, Witte and his friends per-
3
Note to a despatch from the German charg6 d affaires at Madrid, Wilhelm von
Stumm, to Prince von Billow, March 9, 1906 (Die Grosse Politik , vol. xxii, p. 268).
. .
2
Tlie Memoirs of Count Witte (1840-1916), translated from the original Russian manu
script and edited by Abraham Yarmolinsky, pp. 292 sqq.
132
ALGECIRAS TO ANGLO-RUSSIAN -AGREEMENT
ceived that the brusque methods employed by William II were
producing the opposite effect to that which he expected, tighten

ing instead of loosening the Anglo-French entente. Austria, Ger
many s
ally,
had no Morocco. She complained
direct interests in
at Washington that Germany s was too unyielding and
attitude
sought to discover a compromise which would be generally

acceptable. But of President Roosevelt s attitude we must speak
at greater length. For it was
very different from what it had been
in 1905, and the difference has petplexed historians.
A determined foe of Delcasse s policy, he alone, among the
rulers of the great Powers, had
supported the German Emperor s
demand that the question of Morocco should be submitted to an
international conference. Now, in 1906, through his representa
tive at Algeciras he became the opponent of German intransigence
whose intervention finally compelled the German Government to
capitulate
on the fundamental question of the gendarmerie. How
are we to explain this change of front? By the change in- the diplo
matic situation during the interval. In 1904, the Japanese victories,
following so close upon the conclusion of her treaty with England

and the signature of the Anglo-French agreement, had seemed
tomake Britain the arbiter of world politics. In 1905 the treaty
of peace between Russia and Japan had been signed in the
United States under the aegis of the President, who had been sup
ported by German diplomacy, and on the
other hand it was with
his Emperor William had annulled that portion
support that the
of the Anglo-French agreement which concerned Morocco.
Therefore, when 1906 opened it was no longer King Edward who
was overlord of the world, but the Emperor William and Presi
dent Roosevelt. But Roosevelt had not humbled King Edward
in 1905 to minister to the Emperor William s conceit; to humble
the latter monarch he wished to make himself if
in his turn,
possible the umpire between Germany and France on the question

of Morocco. If we would understand the troubled history of these
years we must be
careful not to classify France among the powers
of the first rank. France was simply the greatest among the powers
of the secondclass, by turns beneficiary and victim of the struggle
for world hegemony carried on above her head by a small group

of giants England, Germany, and the United States of America.
In 1906 we cannot add Russia, for her power was at the moment
under eclipse.
133
The question was therefore finally settled by a compromise.
The discussions at the Conference bore chiefly on two points:
the institution of a state bank and a gendarmerie. In the matter of
the bank France was defeated. She claimed a preponderant share
in its control,
pleading the amount of French investments in
Morocco. She secured only three out of the fourteen seats on the
board of directors. In the matter of the gendarmerie, on the
other hand, her claims were far more successful. Germany pro
posed an international gendarmerie, to be organized by the
Sultan under the control of the diplomatic corps. France had
the wisdom to put forward from the very beginning an ex
tremely moderate proposal. The gendarmerie should be con
fined to the eight open ports of Morocco and not entrusted to
France alone but divided between Spain and herself. Germany
refused, as she refused when proposed that the Franco-
Italy
Spanish gendarmerie should be placed under the control of some
neutral power. But when Roosevelt adopted die Italian proposal
she suddenly changed her tone and accepted a compromise put
forward by Austria at her suggestion, that the policing of certain
ports should be entrusted to France, of others to Spain, and at
Casablanca to a neutral power, whose chief representative should
have the right to inspect the French and Spanish gendarmerie in
other ports. It was now the turn of France to refuse and be blamed
for her intransigence by London and Petersburg. But Roosevelt
intervened a second time, and more francophil than Grey and his
subordinates, rejected the policing of one port by a third power.
For the second time Germany submitted. Nevertheless the argu
ment Roosevelt brought forward against the Austrian com
promise was a double-edged sword. To give the policing of cer
tain ports to France, of others to
Spain, and of one port to a
neutral power was, he argued, the first step towards a partition of
Morocco, and therefore a threat to the sovereignty of the Sultan.
But for the same reason he must condemn at the same time the
Franco-Spanish proposal that the gendarmerie should be French
in some ports, Spanish in others. In every port there must be a
force of mixed nationality, French and
Spanish. France however
persisted in her claim and since she had now the unreserved sup
port of England and Russia and since Roosevelt did not wish to
appear in any respect less francophil than England, he yielded,
though with bad grace. For the third time Germany gave way.
134
By who was to be
the terms of the final agreement the
inspector,
Swiss, would not command in any port. At Tangier and Casa
blanca the gendarmerie would be a mixed force, French and
Spanish. At Larache it would be Spanish, French at Rabat, Safi,
Mazagan, and Mogadof When compared with the gains France .
had expected from the agreement of 1904, this was little. When
compared with the losses Germany had expected to inflict upon
her it was a great deal. It was the first instalment of that Franco-
Spanish occupation of the coast of Morocco England had sanc
tioned in I904. 1
May we
then regard the question of Morocco as finally settled
after thesetwelve troublous months? In Morocco friction con
tinued between the French and Germans until the French army
occupied Casablanca in 1907, and as a result of the occupation the
Sultan Abdul Aziz was overthrown by a national rising and re
placed by Abdul Hamid. And on the other hand did the agree
ment do anything to diminish the rivalry between England and
Germany on all the seas of the globe? British naval and military
circles were so sensitive that the least incident was sufficient to
arouse indignation and alarm. Were the Germans carrying on in
their colony of South-West Africa a difficult campaign against a
native revolt? pretext. They had designs on the
It was a mere
of the world. 2 Did a German com
British possessions in that part
pany negotiate with the Portuguese Government the purchase of

land in Madeira for the construction of a sanatorium, another
obtain a concession from the Spanish Government for a cable
1
For the Conference of Algeciras see, in the first place, Andre Tardieu, La Conference
d*Alge*siras: Histoire diplomatique de la Crise tnarocaine (15 Janvier-7 Avril 1906),
a work
very indiscreet at the time of publication, and very informative, but the polemics of a
contemporary too closely mixed up with the events he relates for the historian to make un
controlled use of his statements. The book has also lost its importance since its revelations
have been verified and completed by the important German and English diplomatic pub
lications (Ore Grosse Politik vol. xxii British Documents
. . . vol. iii, pp. 204 sqq.). For . . .
the part played by Roosevelt and his representative at Algeciras, Henry White, the
American Ambassador in Rome, see J. B. Bishop, Theodore Roosevelt and His Time, 1920,
vol. i, pp. 488 sqq.; also Allen Nevins, Henry White, Thirty Years of American Diplomacy,
1930, pp. 261 sqq.
2
H. of C., July 31, 1906, Lyttleton s speech (Parliamentary Debates, 4th Series, vol. cbtii,
P- 75?)- Sir Percy FitzPatrick s address to the members of the Empire Parliamentary
Association, July 9, 1919 (Sir John A. R. Marriott, The Mechanism of the Modern State . . .
vol. i, p. 259 ,). Sir
C. Hardinge to Sir Edward Grey, August 1906 (British Documents i<5,
. , . vol. iii, p. 367).
135
passing through the Canaries? The German navy,

of course, was
a base for its cruisers. It was evident that the
seeking Anglo-
French had not been weakened. Contrary to German
entente
hopes, Algeciras had proved that the entente, far from being the
caprice of a cabinet or party was based on the facts of
the inter
national situation and therefore remained as firm under a Liberal
Government as it had been when the Conservatives were in office.
Nevertheless, neither the two months during which the Con
ference was in session nor the months which followed it were a
period of war fever. The British had just emerged from a struggle
which at the outset they had regarded as nothing more than a
punitive expedition of the colonial type, but which had ended by
a great war. Some had
attaining or almost attaining the scale of
even been afraid it would expand into a European war. At no
price would they incur a similar risk. This was
the fundamental
significance of the January election. They wished to put war out

of their minds and they succeeded. During the Conference at
Algeciras an occasional article expressed the opinion of the leading
English newspapers in favour of France, but in the interval a host
of other questions concerning domestic politics occupied their
readers attention, at a time when the first session opened of a
Parliament whose aspect was almost revolutionary. When the
Conference had closed with results not very satisfactory to the
German foreign office, England made it clear that while she
wished to maintain the entente cordiale she would do nothing
thatwould give it a too openly anti-German aspect. London,
which during the Conference had sent her county councilllors on
an gave a cordial reception during the fol
official visit to Paris,
lowing summer to of German journalists and a dele

a delegation
gation of German burgomasters. King Edward, after an official

visit to President Fallieres at the beginning of May, stopped in
August at Homburg on his way to Wiesbaden to pay William II
the visit of a relative and friend. These manifestations of friendly

feeling between England and Germany alarmed certain political
circles in France;. 1 Not so many years before England had been
1
Their mistrust had already found expression during the Conference at Algeciras,
especially when the British Government differed from the French in its attitude towards
the compromise proposed by Austria. See two despatches from Sir Francis Bertie to Sir
Edward Grey of March 15, 1906 (British Documents vol. iii, p. 306). For its persistence
. . .
see Sir Edward Grey to Sir Francis Bertie, July 9, 1906; Sir F. Bertie to Sir Edward Grey,
July 12, 1906; C. Spring-Rice to Sir Edward Grey, August 31, 1906 (British Documents . . .
vol. iii, pp. 361, 362, 374).
136
virtually the ally of Germany against France. Might not that time
return ?But these fears were as superficial as they were ill-founded.
The predominant sentiment in France, as in England, was the
any price. Of this Delcasse s fall in June
desire for peace almost at
1905 had been a striking proof. The French had feared lest
England s friendship for France might force her into an armed
struggle with Germany. After that, how could France be
genuinely alarmed to see England remove what she regarded as
her greatest danger by entertaining, side by side with the entente
cordiale, as friendly relations with Germany as the situation per
mitted? Moreover, many signs proved that French feeling had
changed very little since the previous June. The Chamber ex
pressed the profound indifference of the nation to the question
which was being discussed at Algeciras by overthrowing the
Rouvier Cabinet at one of the most critical moments of the Con
ference, on a question of domestic policy. The general election
which followed a few weeks later was almost as sensational as the
British election of January. It resulted in the rout, almost the
total annihilation, of the party which represented a bellicose
patriotism. Paris therefore did nothing to encourage the French

in Morocco to adopt an aggressive attitude. Clemenceau, who
became Prime Minister in October, an old opponent of colonial
expansion, was perfectly sincerewhen he informed the German
Ambassador that Morocco left him completely indifferent 1 If, .
however, it was obvious to everybody that the French Govern

ment and Parliament had not the least wish for incidents to occur
in Morocco, and in no case could conceivably provoke them,
incidents which might nevertheless take place would lose much
of their gravity.
The new foreign policy inaugurated by the Foreign Office at

the end of 1902 and to which even after the change of govern
ment it had remained faithful, and the nation with it, has appeared
in our account of Algeciras as simply a policy of friendship with
France and the Latin nations. But the reconciliation with France
had still to be completed by a reconciliation with Russia. In
1
Prince Radolin to Prince von Bttlow, March 15, 1907 (Die Grosse Politik . . , vol. xxiii,
P- 547)-
137
fact, the Foreign Office had done everything in its power to
reach an understanding, not only with France, but also with
Russia from 1895, when Lord Salisbury took office, till 1898. But
the Russian occupation of Port Arthur in March 1898 had brought
the negotiations with Russia to a sudden end and it was then that
England had made the advances which Germany had rejected so

arrogantly. When the policy of an Anglo-German entente failed,
those politicians who about 1901 first perceived the necessity of
finding Continental allies against Germany thought first of Russia,
and it was because there seemed no hope of success in that direc
tion that they turned in despair to France. Unfortunately the
entente cordiale had hardly been achieved when it led to the Tangier
episode and Delcass^ s fall, humiliations of France and almost

equally of Great Britain. To what did the Wilhelmstrasse owe
this success ? Surely to the fact that Russia, weakened by its defeat
in the Far East, had
France defenceless before the threat of a
left
German invasion? 1 Was
it not a matter of vital
importance to
court Russia once more? Since the day must come, five or ten
years hence, when she would have recovered from the disasters
that had befallen her, must not England take steps to assure that
she would not be, as so often in the past, her enemy, but her
friend, and form an alliance between France, Russia, and herself
sufficiently strong to put a stop to this German bullying?
The task was far from easy. The renewal of the Anglo-Japanese
alliaricehad strengthened Russian dislike of England, and if no
one in London had discovered the secret of the Bjorkoe interview,
the French diplomatists, now friends of the Foreign Office,
brought Sir Edward Grey disquieting reports of the favourable

attitude of Lamsdorff and Witte towards the project of a Conti
nental combination against Britain. 2 But the more alarming these
reports, the more pressing the need to take action, and perhaps
the weakness of Russia at the close of 1905 was actually favour
able to the opening of negotiations. Now that British imperialism
had become more pliable, the same might be expected of Russian. 3
1
Memorandum by Sir Edward Grey, February 20, 1906; and the accompanying notes
by C. Hardinge (British Documents
Sir vol. iii, p. 267), also a minute bearing Grey s sig
. . .
nature of September 18, 1906 (British Documents vol. iii, p. 389).

. , .
2
Sir Charles Hardinge to the Marquess of Lansdowne, October 4, 8, 14, 21, 1905; the
Marquess of Lansdowne to Sir F. Bertie, October 25, 1905 (British Documents vol. iv, , . .
pp. 205, 208, 211, 214, 217).

8
Lieutenant-Colonel Napier to Sir A. Nicolson, April 27, 1907: . . . she is still
smarting
from the Japanese defeat that we were the indirect means of inflicting upon her, and the
138
Lord Lansdowne had been putting out feelers for several weeks
when the Unionist Cabinet resigned, but official
negotiations
were not opened until December 1905. The rapprochement with
Russia was the achievement of Sir Edward Grey and the Foreign
Office during the eighteen months of the new Government.
first
When Sir Charles

Hardinge agreed to leave the embassy at
Petersburg to become permanent under-secretary at Downing
Street, it was because he believed that in that capacity he Could
do more to promote an understanding with Russia.1 He was suc
ceeded by Sir Arthur Nicolson, who having worked hard at
Tangier, Madrid and Algeckas to promote the rapprochement
with France went to Petersburg to continue there the same anti-
German policy. He was accompanied by Sir Donald Mackenzie
Wallace. Sir Donald had been King Edward s agent at Algeciras.
Speaking Russian fluently and with a thorough knowledge of the
country, he became the counsellor and guide of the new ambas
sador, who might otherwise have been at a loss. in surroundings
so completely strange. The more so that he arrived in the midst
of a revolution. After long months filled with repeated risings
brdtally repressed the first met. Duma
new cabinet was appoin A
ted to meet it in which Lamsdoirffwas replaced by another minis
ter for foreign affairs, Isvolsky. The British, well satisfied with
LamsdorfF, with whom they had concluded in January by word

of mouth a species of tacit agreement an accord between the ,
two powers, 2 were afraid that Isvolsky

foreign policies of the
3
might prove more open to German influences. The hopes of the
Germans, exceedingly displeased by the Russian attitude at the
4
Algeckas Conference, rose in proportion to the English fears.
lossof prestige of an unsuccessful war coupled with the revolutionists at home has evi
dently greatly shaken her hold upon her Central Asian Mohammedan subjects and it is of
the greatest importance that we should take advantage of this frame of mind (British
Documents . . . vol. iv, p. 532).
1
Sir Charles Arthur Nicolson, September 4, 1907:
Hardinge to Sir I felt that I . . .
could do more by impressing my views on people at home, and I promised both Lams-
dorffand the Emperor that I would do my level best to bring it about [an agreement with
Russia] (British Documents vol. v, p. 580).
. . .
2 Mr. Isvolsky observed

Sir A. Nicolson to Sir Edward Grey,
September I, 1906:
". . .
that he wished to act in harmony with the spirit of what he termed the "tacit agreement"
of January last* (British Documents vol. iv, p. 386). For the tacit agreement itself see
. . .
*
Spring-Rice to Sir Edward Grey, January 26, 1906 (British Documents vol. iv., p. 223). . .
8
Sir A. Johnstone to Sir Edward Grey, Copenhagen, May 27, 1906 (British Documents
. .vol. iv, p. 235). See, however, the reassuring account communicated by Leon Bour
.
geois, of his conversation with Isvolsky at Paris

in April (Reginald Lister to Sir Edward
Grey, May 21, 1906; British Documents voL iii, p. 356). . . .
* Von Schon to Prince von vol. xrii, pp.

Biilow, May 14, 1906 (Die Grosse Politik . . .
139
But the former were speedily reassured, the latter disappointed.
Isvolsky,who, perhaps among the agents of the Russian
the first
Government, had received King Edward s confidence at Copen

hagen in 1904, showed himself from the outset determined upon
a policy of understanding with England. The negotiations for the
conclusion of an Anglo-Russian entente on the same lines as the
entente concluded with France in April 1904, continued without
interruption and from November were actively pressed forward.

They led to the convention of August 31, 1907. They had proved
a more difficult task than the Anglo-French negotiations. This is
easily understood when we

remember the many conflicts of
interest and opinion which divided the two countries.
In Russia the pro-British party was the Liberal party, the party
which supported the revolution. All its sympathies lay with the
three countries of Western Europe England, France and Italy
where parliamentary government was established, and which,
moreover, were drawing so closely together. If Isolvsky, the
foreign minister, was in favour of an agreement with England, it
was because at home he supported a liberal policy of loyal co
operation with the Duma. To all these groups of the left Germany
was an object of hatred. William II was accused of encouraging
the to adopt a policy of reaction. When the
weak Nicholas II
Duma was dissolved in July 1906, the Government thought it

prudent to guard the German embassy with troops. It was afraid
1
it
might be sacked by a mob of rioters. On the other hand the
party of reaction was pro-German. The reconciliation between
England and France, Russia s official ally, far from producing an
immediate rapprochement with England accentuated at first the
hostility entertained towards France in military circles. These
circles cherished the hope that the old project of an alliance be
tween the three Emperors might be revived. Russia had learned
by bitter experience the cost of war, defeat, disaster and revolu
tion. The efforts of the Panslavists to break up the Austro-Hun-
garian monarchy should therefore be discouraged. And the
22-4). Count von Mettemich to Prince von Billow, July 31, 1906 (Die Grosse Politik . . .
vol. xxxi 11
p. 448). See on the other hand Count Hencicel s report of May 17, 1906 (Die
,
Grosse Politik vol. xxii, p. 23). For the uncertainty felt in London see Von Stumm s
. . ,
ambiguous despatch to Prince von Billow, May 19, 1906 (Die Grosse Politik vol. . . .
xxii, pp. 24~-<5).

1
Or rather, fearing a hostile demonstration against the German Embassy and not wish
ing to single out this particular Embassy for protction it had them all guarded (Alexander
Isvolsky, Memoirs, p. 208).
140
Russian Emperor should accede to the alliance betweett the Ger
man and the Austrian Emperors. Peace would be assured, directly
in Eastern and Central Europe, indirectly throughout the entire
Continent by this revived Holy Alliance, this league of three
monarchs against the danger of popular insurrection.
In England it was just the opposite. If the imperialists whether
they belonged to the Unionist or the Liberal party objected to
particular concessions to Russia the Foreign Office found it politic
to make, they were taken as a whole, obsessed by fear of the
German fleet, stronger every year and stationed at the very gates of
Britain, and in their anxiety to possess an ally sufficiently powerful
to intimidate Germany were seriously troubled by the collapse of
Russia, whicha few years previously they had so eagerly desired.
Among the advanced Liberals on the other hand, in spite of their

indifference to the expansion of the British Empire in Asia, the
prospect of a rapprochement with Russia was greeted with an out

burst of indignation. To be sure they sympathised with the Rus
sian people. But they witnessed impotence to overthrow the
their
Czar, and after, as before, was incarnate in a Govern

1905, Russia
ment they abhorred, which completely stifled all freedom of
thought and massacred the workers and the Jews. Their denuncia
tions not only filled the Radical press but found utterance in the
House of Commons itself. To enter into friendly relations with
the Russian Government was to give the latter British support in
the struggle against the revolution, to assist the cause of reaction
in Russia and indirectly throughout the entire Continent.
From this source countless difficulties arose. At the opening of
1906 the Russian ministers asked King Edward to pay a visit to
the Czar. Either they wished to give some pledge to Liberal
to the
opinion or hoped to compromise the King by the support
cause of order his visit would appear to give. From every point of
view the proposed visit was dangerous, and he declined the invi
tation. 1 Instead Sir Edward Grey suggested that the British fleet
should visit Cronstadt. This time it was the Russian Government
which asked the British to postpone the proposed visit. 2 The same
year the Inter- Parliamentary Union was to
hold its Congress in
London and for the first time a Russian delegation would be
1
Sir Sidney Lee, King Edward VII ... vol. ii, pp. 564-5. Spring-Rice to Sir Edward
Grey, January 16, March 15, 1906 (British Documents. vol. iv, pp. 221, 227).
. .
8
Sir Sidney Lee, ibid, p. 565.
I4.I
present, since Russia

at last
possessed a Parliament. But on the
very day, July 23, that Campbell-Bannerman, as Prime Minister,
was to give the Congress an official welcome the news arrived
that the Czar had dissolved the Duma. Je nefais pas de cowmen*
l
tarns declared Sir Henry, who spoke in French, 1 sur ks nouvelles
qui ont idati ce matin, ce nest ni k lieu ni k moment. Nous navons

pas
une assez grande connaissance desfaits pour pouvoir blamer ou louer.
Mais ceci du moins nouspouvons dire nous quifondons noire,
confiance
et noire
espoir
sur k
rigime parlementaire. Les nouvelles institutions ont
orageuse. La Douma revivra d une
souvent unejeunesse accidence sinon
9
forme ou d une Nouspouvons dire avec-toute sindrtti: La Douma

autre.
est morte. Vive La DoumaJ 2 The Russian court took

offence, and
the Russian ambassador protested. Sir Henry was obliged to
explain, almost excuse, his words.

During the following months the Russian Government
strengthened its
authority. The Stolypin cabinet, formed after the
coup tfitat ofJuly, seemed likely to last and displayed a measure of
energy and consistency both in repressing disorder and in carrying
out some useful measures of social reform. The visit of two
Russian men-of-war to Portsmouth in the spring of 1907, fol
lowed by a visit of the crews to London, proved that war and
revolution had not completely annihilated the Russian navy and
was a sign of the friendly relations which, now existed between
the two Governments. Since Isvolsky remained at the Russian
foreign office the negotiations for an agreement were pushed for

ward, the more actively since the Russian cabinet offered firmer
guarantees of stability. On August 31 the Convention was signed.
Both for its positive contents and its omissions, and for the recep
tion it met with in both countries, it merits detailed examination. 3
1
A. Spender, The Life of the Right Hon. Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, vol. ii, p. 264.
J.
2
do not propose to comment on the sudden news received this morning. This is
I
neither the place nor the time. We

do not know the facts sufficiently for blame or approval.
But this at least we can say who base our confidence and our hope on parliamentary
government. New institutions have often a chequered, if not a stormy, youth. Under one
form or another the Duma will revive, In all sincerity we can say "the Duma is dead, long
live the Duma .
1
For the Anglo-Russian Convention see British Documents vol. iv, pp. 232 sqq. (See
. . .
also Die Grosse Politik vol. xxvi, pp. i sqq.) There is nothing on the
subject in Isvol-
. . .
slcy s (unfinished) memoirs. Nothing either in Witte s, who, however, was no longer in
office after May 1906 and whose sole interest before that date in a
rapprochement with
comment of a dismissed minister: The Convention inaugurated the policy of philandering

with England. ... It was due to my opposition that it was not concluded until 1907
(Memoirs, pp. 432-3).
142
The preamble of the Convention laid down that its

purpose
was to settle by mutual agreement certain questions relative to the
interests of the signatories on the continent of Asia, and the re
moval of every cause of dispute between Great Britain and
Russia in respect of the aforesaid questions It comprised three .
sections, an agreement concerning Persia a convention concern ,
ing Afghanistan and an agreement concerning Tibet 1

,
.
The agreement concerning Tibet and the Convention concern

ing Afghanistan dealt with the northern frontier of India. The
imperialist school
wanted England, in order to safeguard India
against the danger of a Russian invasion, to cross the Himalayas
and establish to the north a series of bulwarks or glacis against
an enemy considered so dangerous. On this point Lord Curzon
and Lord Kitchener, however they might dispute the limits of
their respective jurisdictions, were agreed. The new Viceroy, Lord
Minto, adopted the views common to the entire Anglo-Indian
world, and King Edward was of the same opinion. But the Russo-
Japanesewar had changed the face of Asia. For a long time to
come there would be no Russian peril in this region. The Foreign
Office had not waited for die advent of the Liberal Government
to disavow Lord Curzon s policy in regard to Afghanistan and
Tibet. This, no doubt, even more than his quarrel with Lord
2
Kitchener, was the reason of his recall. Morley, therefore, sup-
1
For the meaning given to these terms convention* and agreement see the memoran
dum drawn up by Isvolsky on August (19,) 1907 (British Documents
<5,
vol. iv, pp. 300-1,
. . .
499-500).
*
On thispoint see Lord Midleton s revelations in a speech delivered at Guildford
on
November The speaker wished to correct mistakes contained in a recent bio
20, 1930.
graphy of Lord Curzon. by reference to confidential statements made to him by Balfour
shortly before his death. His difficulty with the home Government was
that he claimed to
direct the foreign policy of India in relation to her neighbours without sufficient regard
to its effects on British policy throughout the world. Most unfortunately he felt it neces
and
sary to advise operations in Tibet and Afghanistan, which the Russian Government
our ally the Ameer regarded with the greatest anxiety. Mr. Balfour s Cabinet neither
shared his fears nor were willing to acquiesce in the strong measures he proposed. It hap
pened that in that body of twenty men all of whom were his admirers and probably at
least half were his intimate friends, one and all were unanimous that a crisis must be
avoided, and in both cases they unanimously refused to authorize the serious steps which
he proposed to take and our successors in office entirely concurred with us, In spite of
Edward VII* s repeated requests neither Balfour at the end of 1905 nor Campbell-Banncr-
man at the beginning of 1906 would give Lord Curzon the English peerage which would
have enabled him to sit in the House of Lords as an inconvenient critic of the Government s
policy (Sir Sidney Lee, King Edward Vlt.., vol. ii, p. 379).
He did not obtain it until 1908
the Committee of
ported not only by his colleagues, but also by
Imperial Defence, had no difficulty in overcoming Anglo-Indian
opposition and checking without danger to the Empire the innate
tendency of imperialism to a policy of aggrandisement. By the
terms of the Convention of 1907 Russia recognized Afghanistan
*as outside the Russian
sphere of influence , and undertook not to
said diplomatic agents to that country but to negotiate with it
through the channel of the British Government. In return England
pledged herself not to interfere in the domestic government of
Afghanistan so long as the latter respected the pledges she had
given to England not to annex any portion of Afghan territory
and to maintain equal commercial rights for both countries,
any
privilege secured for British or Anglo-Indian trade to accrue auto
matically to Russian. As regards Tibet both Governments prom
ised to abstain from
any interference with the domestic afiairs
of the country, to send no representatives to Lhassa, or seek
any
concessions, such as railways, roads, telegraphs, or mines, either
subjects. Even the

for themselves or for their of a scienti
despatch
fic
expedition by either of the two Governments should be subject
to the consent of the other. Protests were raised in Russia
against
the Afghan Convention, because it recognized England s estab
lished right of exclusive control over the
foreign policy of Afghan
istan. Protests were made in London
by a section of the Conserva
tive opposition
against the Tibetan agreement. For when Lord
Curzon was Viceroy England had despatched a
military expedi
tion to Tibet and
imposed upon her a quasi-protectorate in which
China had just acquiesced, and the fruits of these successes were
now surrendered. But this portion at least of the Convention was
loudly applauded by the Radical press; the cost of the Indian
army could now be reduced.
That part of the Convention which concerned Persia met with
a far more mixed
reception in Russia and still more in England.
Persia was one of those
halt-civilized, half-barbarous countries
which were attempting to raise themselves to the
European level,
getting into debt as a result of their ill-advised efforts, and as
they
piled up their indebtedness becoming the mark and
finally the
prey of their creditors greed. Russia had already laid hands on
when the Government had no more reason to refuse him this gratification of his personal
ambition since he had just entered the House of Lords as a
representative Irish peer (see the
letter to thelnsh
peers offering himself as candidate, December 27 1907)
144
the northern portion of the country and intended to extend her
grasp to the Persian Gulf, where one day, if she recovered her
strength, she might find that open port she had lost in Port
Arthur. Here, however, she was faced by the ambitions both of
Germany, who was extending in this direction her railway from
Bagdad, and ofEngland, who, as mistress of the seas, regarded her
self as entitled to exercise suzerainty over the coast of the Gulf,
How could an agreement be achieved on this point between
England and Russia? Russia wanted two vertical zones of in
fluence, the eastern of the two Russian, the western British. The
Persian coast of the Gulf would be divided between both. England-
wanted two horizontal zones, the southern, which would be
British, would include the entire Persian coast of the Gulf. But the
British Government, not daring to put forward this claim, pro
posed the compromise on which the agreement was based. The
two powers agreed to divide Persia into three zones. 1 In the north
ern zone, which included Teheran, England would leave Russian
influence a free field. In the southern, or rather the south-eastern,
zone, which ran from a line drawn from the Afghan frontier to
Bender-Abbas, on the coast, Russia would leave England a free
hand. In the intermediate zone, which comprised the entire Per
sian coast of the Gulf, England and Russia mutually undertook
not to prevent the grant of concessions to the subjects of either
2
power without a preliminary agreement between both. The
British Government, with the support or rather under the pressure
of the Government of India, attempted to insert in the agreement
a formula by which Russia recognized England s special interests
in the Persian Gulf. But the attempt was defeated by the refusal
of the Russian Government, which maintained that, since this
was a problem which concerned other nations besides Great
it had no
Britain and Russia, place in a bilateral agreement. There
were moments during the summer of 1907 when this difference
1
In the document they were careful not to term these zones spheres of influence or
even of interest so avoid the appearance of violating the sovereignty of Persia at a
as to
moment when in the preamble of this very agreement both powers pledged themselves
to respect* her integrity and independence*. See Sir Edward Grey to Sir Arthur Nicolson,
October 31, 1906; Sir Arthur Nicolson to Sir Edward Grey, November 4, 1906 (British
Documents .vol. iv, pp. 407, 409).
. .
Grey had wanted a special arrangement for Teheran, the capital of the entire country.
2
See the minute signed by Sir Charles Hardinge, February 26, 1907 (British Documents . . .
vol. iv, p. 433). But he abandoned the claim almost immediately in return for guarantees
given to British interests in the neutral zone Sir Edward Grey to Sir Arthur Nicolson,
March 8, 1907 (British Documents , .vol. iv, pp. 43-5).
.
seemed likely -to bring the negotiations to an end. Sir Arthur
Nicolson found himself obliged to visit London, apparently to
urge counsels of moderation on his Government. Finally England
gave way. All that Sir Edward Grey was able to secure was the
publication, at the same time as the agreement, of a letterfrom
himself to Nicolson, in which, after recalling the existence of
special rights in the Gulf guaranteed to England by their exercise
for more than a century, he pointed out that during these negotia
tions the Russian Government had implicitly recognized these
rights and expressed his belief that this question will not give rise
to difficulties between the two Governments if it should ever
prove necessary to raise it. This did not satisfy the uncompromis
ing imperialists in England. And in Russia on the other hand
complaints were raised that she obtained by the agreement
nothing she did not possess already. But both sides were so weary
and Russia so exhausted that these complaints found little echo. 1
In England it was the Radical group, a powerful section of the
ministerialists, who regarded the convention as committing the
British Government to an enterprise closely resembling the
French enterprise in Morocco, and to a dismemberment of Persia
to be effected in concert with a Government which was the
sworn foe of freedom and civilization.
When, in May 1906, the Standard revealed to its readers for the
firsttime the secret that England was seeking an agreement with
Russia, the paper informed them that the question of the Bagdad
railway would be among those discussed. And when the Daily
2
Telegraph, in September, made further revelations, often true even

in detail, the article, after representing the Tibetan question as on
the point of settlement and admitting that the negotiations on the
subject of Persia would be far more difficult, added: In time, and
1 As
early as 1903 Valentine Chirol one of the principal architects of the entente cordiale
wrote as follows: Are we to run the risk of seeing Eastern Persia converted into another
Manchuria, with a military railway on the Manehurian model, running down to another
Port Arthur on the Gulf or on the Indian Ocean, and turning the flank of Afghanistan and
British Baluchistan, or are we to draw a line at which by mutual consent or otherwise,
Russia s policy of peaceful penetration from the north shall be met by a British policy of
peaceful penetration? (The Middle Eastern Question, or some Political Problems of Indian
Defence, p. 404).
*
May 19, 1906.
146
doubtless very soon, the question of the Near East will be reached,
and I may say, without laying claim to the gift of prophecy, that
disposed of, Russian warships will no longer
when it is be exclu
1
ded from the Dardanelles/ Nevertheless, the Convention of
August 31, 1907, contained no mention either of Asia Minor or
Turkey in Europe. On these points an agreement, or at least a

that silence had been
public agreement, was so difficult to reach
found preferable.
At Constantinople England continued to follow the compli
cated policy she had pursued for more than a century. On the one
hand by constituting herself protector of the Christian popula
tions oppressed by the Sultan she continued to augment her pres
tige in a way which served her

honour and interests at the same
ime. On the other hand she shrank from weakening the Sultan s
power to such an extent as to strengthen Russian influence on
the
Bosphorus, for she was afraid that Russia might one day occupy
Constantinople and restore the old Byzantine empire. But the
appearance of a new factor had made her policy
more difficult.
At the period of the Crimean War, Germany did not exist. In

1878, Germany, still new-born, had not yet entered upon a policy
of expansion and Bismarck had expressed the sentiments of the
entire nation when he declared that Macedonia was not worth
the life of a Pomeranian grenadier. In the interval the situation
had changed. Throughout the Mohammedan world Germany
was pursuing a policy which though, as we know to-day, des
tined to fail, appeared at the time clever and cautious. German
It offered its protection to the
imperialism sought no annexations.
native monarchs in return for compensations of a purely economic
In this way
nature banking, railway, or mining concessions.
had made herself at Fez, as a bulwark
Germany extremely popular
at Teheran as a bulwark
against French or Spanish imperialism,
Russian or British, and again at Constantinople as a
against
defence the Russians and still more against the English.
against
Of this the Bagdad railway was
policy of peaceful penetration
the principal achievement. When the Anglo-Russian negotia
tions at Petersburg, the first section from Konieh to
opened
Eregli had just been opened. When
the second section had been
completed and the line taken across the Taurus

the construction
1
Daily Telegraph, September 29, 1906, England and Russia. An Understanding on
Asiatic Policy . Persia and Tibet. Petersburg, September 25.
147
of the remaining section over a vast plain to Mosul would be an
easy task. If it were carried further still the railway would reach
the Persian frontier, and German trade and finance were already
engaged in a systematic attempt to obtain a footing in Persia.

There was a German bank at Teheran, a German line of shipping
in the Persian Gulf. The negotiators of the Anglo-Russian Con
vention were therefore obliged to deal with the problem of Bag
dad. On the Russian side Isvolsky proposed that by a friendly
agreement the German railways in Mesopotamia should be linked

up with the system of railways which Russia was constructing in
northern Persia. Sir Edward Grey was disturbed by the German
project of extending the line to Koweit on the Persian Gulf.
Would Germany agree that from Bagdad or at least from Bassora
trafficshould proceed by water in vessels owned by a British line?
Or that the final section of railway from Bassora to Koweit should
be built and worked by England? Or alternatively that the entire
line should be placed under the management of an international
board? Negotiations followed. Germany indeed could not refuse
to negotiate, for she knew that the undertaking could be com
pleted only with the help of British and French capital, and that
it would not be
forthcoming without the sanction of Downing
Street and the Quai d Orsay. But the negotiations failed both
between Germany and Russia, and Germany and England. They
failed because the German Government insisted that the under
taking should remain altogether, or at least preponderantly,

German. And they failed for another reason because Germany
was afraid that their success would endanger her credit with the
Sultan. He was convinced that England, mistress of Egypt and
India, was preparing to embark upon a further project of aggran
disement, nothing less than to unite these two possessions by
annexation of all the intervening territory. He looked to a Ger
man Bagdad to plant itself in this territory as a barrier blocking
the road against this new advance of British imperialism. 1
As regards European Turkey, Isvolsky, hostile as he was to the
Asiatic policy the Russian empire had pursued for the last twenty
years and anxious to see Russia once more turn her face towards
Europe, might be expected to revive the question of the Darda
nelles.Russia had just lost Port Arthur. Might she not obtain by
friendly agreement with England, if not a port in the Persian
1
For these negotiations see Die Grosse Politik . . . vol. xxvi, pp. 175 sqq.
148
Gulf, at least a free passage for her navy into the Mediterranean?
Itwas with this object in view that he regularly supported the
English standpoint at Constantinople, whether in the matter of
an international gendarmerie in Roumelia or of the higher tariff
the Porte wished to impose? Though British commerce protested
against the latter England consented. But if in concert with Ger

many the Porte demanded
higher tariff, it was to finance the
this
Bagdad railway. And England gave her consent on the express

1
stipulation that the money it yielded should be spent in Roumelia.
She thus contrived while satisfying the demands of British huma-
nitarianism to put an obstacle in the way of German expansion
in Mesopotamia. But on the question of the Dardanelles no agree
ment was reached.
seems in fact that the original conception entertained at
It
Petersburg of an entente with Great Britain was an agreement

about the Straits. This once achieved, it would be easy to reach an
understanding on the questions at issue between the two countries
in Asia. 2 But false reports, circulated by German agents at Con
stantinople and deliberately intended to make the negotiations
difficult by bringing up the question of the Dardanelles, warned
both the English and the Russians of the dangers involved, and
for months those in charge of the negotiations on both sides
tacitly agreed not to knowing England s tradi

raise it.
Isvolsky,
tional attitude on the from the risk of a refusal.
question, shrank
In fact, circumstances had changed more than he realized. At the
beginning of 1903 Balfour, in a report submitted to the Com
mittee of Imperial Defence, had stated that a passage of the Rus
sian fleet from the Black Sea into the Mediterranean would no
longer endanger the European balance of power, as would

have
been the case fifty years earlier. 3 But Grey did not wish to show
his hand by
raising the question first. Benckendorff, the
4
When
Russian ambassador in London, on a visit to Petersburg, attemp
ted to discuss it with Nicolson, the latter replied that the Darda-
1 vol. v, pp. 168 sqq. Die Grosse Politik vol. xxii, pp. 327 n.
Documents
British . . . . . .
2 a conversation which
Spring-Rice to Sir Edward Grey, January 26, 1906: he reports
he had held with Count BenckendorfF(Briiw/i Documents vol. iv, p. 222). . . .
8
Extract from Defence Committee Paper I B (Report by Mr. Balfour of the conclusion
arrived at on the Hth February in reference to Russia and Constantinople, February i2, 1903.
Quoted in a memorandum by Sir Charles Hardinge, November 16, 1906 (British Docu
ments . vol. iv, p. 59).
. .
4 Sir Edward
Grey to Sir Arthur Nicolson, November 1906 (British Documents ... vol.
iv, p. 414). Minute by Sir Edward Grey following a despitch from Sir Arthur Nicolson,
January 30, 1907 (British Documents . . . vol. iv, p. 523).
149
nelles did not come within his instructions. 1 This was tantamount
to referring him to Sir Edward Grey. Benckendorff, therefore, on
his return to London, informed Grey of the Russian claim that
she should have the right to send her men-of-war into the Mediter
ranean, but the other powers should be not allowed to send theirs
into the Black Sea. His astonishment equalled his delight when
Grey told him frankly that the British Government had deter
mined to abandon her former policy of closing the Straits to
Russia. He added, however, that it could not safely translate this
declaration into a public and documentary engagement. It would

arouse a storm of indignation in the country. Moreover, Russia
and England would act imprudently if they claimed to settle
by
themselves a question which concerned the powers. 2 Isolvsky all
recognized the weight of these arguments. And he returned them

against England when the latter wanted a formal document recog
nizing her special interests in the Persian Gulf. Me was content to
take note of Grey s declaration, reserving the right to act upon it
when circumstances permitted. 3
From all that has been said it is clear in what respects the Anglo-
Russian Convention of 1907 differed from the Anglo-French
entente of 1904. In both cases the superficial
purport was the same,
nothing more than the settlement of outstanding colonial ques
tions. But in the all, or at least all which presented a
former case
were settled. In the latter some were deliberately
serious character,
passed over and they were precisely those which, to judge from
1
Sir Arthur Nicolson to Sir Edward Grey, February 10, 1907 (British Documents . . . vol.
iv, p. 272).
2
Memorandum by Sir Edward Grey, March 15, 1907; Sir Edward Grey to Sir Arthur
Nicolson, Marcha9, 1907 (British Documents . . . vol. iv, pp. 279, 280).
s
Sir Arthur Nicolson to Sir Edward Grey, March 27, 1907; Note by Sir C. Hardinge,
April 2, 1907; Sir Arthur Nicolson to Sir Edward Grey, April 14, 1907; Sir Arthur Nicol-
son to Sir Edward Grey, communicating a memorandum of Isvolsky* s same date; Sir
Edward Grey to Sir A. Nicolson May 1, 1907, enclosing a memorandum to be submitted
to Isvolsky; Sir A. Nicolson to Sir Edward
Grey, July 10, 1907, communicating a memo
randum of Isvolsky s; Sir Edward Grey to H?J. Beirne, July 31, 1907. In O September
Isvolsky raised the question of a through the Dardanelles by Russian men-of-
free passage
war during a series of interviews with Aehrenthal: Baron von Aehrenthal to Prince von
Billow, October 31, 1907 (Die Grosser Politik vol. xxii, p, 80). Cf. Prince von Bulow to
. . .
Baron von Aehrenthal, December 8, 1907 Baron Marschall to Prince von Billow, Decem
;
ber 14, 1907 (ibid., pp. 81 sqq., 83 sqq.).
150
past experience, were likely to prove serious later on. In the for
mer case the reconciliation was not merely political. Public feeling
in both countries became friendly, in spite of the reluctance dis
played in certain quarters, particularly in France. In the latter

there was nothing of the kind not a word was heard of an :
entente cordiak. Moreover the Russians were very careful to main

tain contact with Germany, to keep her in touch with the negotia
tions and remove any anxiety she might feel as to the nature of
the new relations between England and Russia. Even explicit
declarations by German statesmen that they had no objection to
raise were insufficient- to reassure Isvolsky. He remembered that
Billow had said the same when the agreement between England
and France was published in April 1904, and all Europe knew
what had followed. This constant anxiety to keep Germany s
friendship disturbed the Foreign Office, and its alarm reached a
head when, in October 1906, Isvolsky visited Berlin and Paris
while excusing himself from a visit to London. 1 The alarm will
seem justified when we remember what powerful friends Ger
many possessed at the Russian court. Many in the Czar s entourage
resigned themselves to the Convention only because it allowed
Russia to liquidate on the most favourable terms possible the
vast enterprise of imperial expansion in Asia which was on the
verge of failure, made it easier for her to obtain from the West the
money necessary for her recovery and left her perfectly free later
on when she regained her strength to pursue whatever policy she
2
might choose. Like the war itself, the policy which led up to it
had its two fronts, an eastern and a western, distinct from each
other and very imperfectly linked.
Nevertheless Germany had cause for anxiety. The more so since
1 British Documents . vol. iv, pp. 243 sqq. Even in the summer of 1907 when the Con
. .
vention was ready for signature the British representative at Munich, Cartwright, could
write to his Government on August 7: The dream of reconstituting the Alliance between
the three Emperors undoubtedly exists in some quarters. The part that Monsieur
. . .
Isvolsky may play in bringing this about is still uncertain, but he is generally credited with
not being adverse to Russia following such a course If one is to believe what one hears
Monsieur Isvolsky s sympathies lean more towards Germany than towards France*
(British Documents . . . vol. vi, p. 41).
1 In
September 1907 Russia and Great Britain concluded a treaty relating to Persia,
Afghanistan and Tibet. The convention inaugurated the policy of philandering with
England. Since we did not give up our traditional flirting with Germany, the situation
became rather ambiguous. At present we are trying to adjust ourselves to it by assuring
Germany that of course we love her best and that we are flirting with England merely for
appearance s sake, while to England we say the reverse. I believe we shall soon have to
pay for this duplicity (Memoirs of Count IVitte, p. 432).
151
the Convention was preceded by die conclusion of two treaties of

friendship between France and Japan and between Russia and
Japan. These two treaties, of which the former was signed on

June 10, the second on July 30, had presumably been concluded
under the auspices of the Foreign Office. Nor was this all. On
June 1 6 the text was published of two declarations couched in
identical termsand exchanged respectively on May 16 between
England and Spain, and France and Spain, which undertook to
maintain the territorial status quo in the Mediterranean and that
portion of the Atlantic which washed the coasts of Europe and

1
Africa, and the rumour was current that a secret pact of the
same kind had been concluded between England and Germany s
Germany determined to reply to these agree

official ally, Italy.
ments by another to be concluded with Russia, Sweden, and

Denmark for the maintenance of the status quo in the Baltic and,
to make the agreement possible, obtained from France and
England a renunciationof the right of control over the Baltic

won by their joint victories in the Crimean War, Though the
French Government consented, because it did not wish to refuse
a request of its Russian ally, it was a very grudging consent.
But when Germany sought to push her advantage further and
proposed an agreement between England, Denmark, Sweden,
Holland and Belgium for the maintenance of the status quo in
the North Sea, Sir Edward Grey insisted that France should
be included, as mistress of Dunkirk. 2 German policy had missed
1
Weknow today the complete history of these agreements. In 1898 England had
attempted to force upon Spain an alliance, directed against France, which would have
amounted to a naval and military control of Spain by England. When in June 1905 the
King of Spain visited the King of England Lord Lansdowne made a similar but far more
moderate suggestion for an alliance, to be directed this time against Germany. Sir Arthur
Nicolson, British Ambassador at Madrid, communicated Lord Lansdowne s proposal to
JulesCambon, the French Ambassador. The brothers Cambon took it up and transformed
it
eighteen months later (December 1906) into a project for an agreement between France,
England, and Spain to maintain the status quo. The
proposal met with a hostile reception in
London, since the British Government did not desire to make the negotiation of the
Anglo-Russian agreement more difficult by negotiating another anti-German pact. Finally,
as the result it would seem of the visit which Edward VII
paid to Carthagena in April
accompanied by Sir Charles Hardinge, England put forward the suggestion which was
accepted by the French and Spanish Governments of two agreements to be drawn up in
identical terms and signed simultaneously, between
England and Spain on the one hand,
between France and Spain on the other (British Documents vol. vii, pp. I sqq. especially
. , .
;
pp, 1-3, 6-9, 21-2), This is an instance in which the application of their new policy led Sir
Edward Grey and the Foreign Office a little further than they had intended to go.
2
The two agreements were signed at Berlin on April 23, 1908. For the circumstances
under which they were concluded see Viscount
Grey of Fallodon, Twenty-Five Years
11
1892-1916, vol. i, pp. 143 sqq.; Die Grosse Politik . . , vol. xxiii , pp. 400 sqq
152
itsmark. Germany was. obliged to content herself with the Baltic
agreement, a very feeble reply to so many achievements of British
diplomacy which she could not but regard as manifestations of
hostility towards herself. All or almost all the nations of the
world had concluded agreements with one another; Germany was
left in isolation.
5
Agreements, no doubt, not alliances But with an indiscreet .
jubilation a section of the Parisian press represented the agree

ments between France, England, and Spain as amounting to
1
nothing short of an alliance, and an English Conservative organ
betrayed the secret wishes of one section at least of the public by
announcing the signature of the Anglo-Russian Convention as
the conclusion of a treaty* and the formation of an alliance 2 .
Moreover, the Convention had hardly been signed when a series

of visits to Russia by officers of the British staff began visits
without precedent in history. General French visited Russia in
3
the autumn of 1907, General Ian Hamilton the following spring.
And these visits were paid at a time when it was being rumoured
on the Continent that a military convention had been secretly
concluded between France and England, and that the staffs of
both countries had agreed upon the measures to be adopted in the
event of a joint campaign against the German army. How much
truth was there in this rumour? And if it were well founded,
1
Von Muhlberg to Prince von Billow, June 22, 1907: *I took the opportunity to observe
to M. Cambon of the agreements did not directly affect our
that even if the contents
interests, the manner in which they were staged publication on the day when The Hague
Conference opened, two inaccurate despatches of the Agence Havas, the secrecy with
which they were concluded, jubilant utterances in the French Press could not fail to
arouse considerable anxiety in Germany. It was not surprising that such comments as had
appeared in the Matin, that questions of European policy would be settled without con
sulting Germany, were ill-received by German opinion.
had taken pains to restrain
"We
the language of our Press. The French Press had adopted a different attitude to the trans
action from the English. The Standard had even pointed out that any attempt to read into
1
the declarations a significance hostile to Germany would be folly (Die Grosse Politik . . .
vol. xxi11 , p. 571).

2
. . . ... In fact the new Convention perfects and com
A treaty has been concluded.
pletes theimposing edifice of alliances which now enshrines the peace of the world* (Daily
Telegraph, September 2, 1907).
Miquel to Prince von Billow, October 9, 1907; note by WilHam II: "The policy
8 Von
of investment proceeds noiselessly and inevitably in spite of the invitation to Windsor

which is a mere blind intended to throw dust in the eyes of fools in both countries.*
*French s mission to Petersburg three weeks before my visit to London is unprecedented,
the more so since it is well known that no German general has been officially invited to
Russia for the last forty or fifty years (Die Grosse Politik vol. xxv1 p. 48). report
. . .
,
A 6
circulated in Berlin which Renter s Agency was obliged to contradict that a formal
alliance had been concluded between Russia, France, England and Japan (Die Grosse
Politik . . . vol. xxv1 , pp. 53 sqq.).
153
what was the character of the arrangements concluded between
the staffs of the two armies? Before answering, we must study as
a whole the measures adopted to reorganize the military defences
of the United Kingdom by the new minister for war, Richard
Burdon Haldane.
II HALDANE AND ARMY REORGANIZATION
Tounderstand the bearing of the reforms which Haldane

accomplished at the War Office during his seven years as Secre
tary for War we must know the exact nature of the problem with
which the British Government had -been faced, since the experi
ences of the Boer War had compelled it to recognize that a
thoroughgoing reform of the army must be effected to prepare
for the eventuality either of another war of the same kind or of
the European conflict in which it seemed inevitable that England
would one day be involved. What pattern should this work of
reorganization follow? Here as everywhere else the model nation
exercised its attraction. Germany had created an original type of
large standing army, an object of alarm to her neighbours, which

by summoning to the colours all healthyyoung men for a period
of two or even three years, seemed to combine the advantages of
a professional army and a militia. There were indeed many
especially since the Boer War who wished to see England adopt
conscription. But this demand, of considerable strength so long
as the war lasted and with which moreover the Government
1
appeared to agree, lost much of its force when peace had been
restored and dislike of war and
the military profession regained
the ascendancy over fear of the enemy and martial enthusiasm.
1
H. of C., March 8, 1901, Brodrick s speech: . . . I do not doubt that man for man a
voluntary army is better than a conscription army, but man for man a trained army of
conscripts is better than an incompletely trained army of volunteers and especially if it
happens to outnumber them. Therefore, my adhesion to the voluntary system is strictly
limited by our ability to obtain under it a force with which our military authorities can
satisfy the Government that they have sufficient force to resist invasion and can maintain
it to their satisfaction. At the same time, the Government
fully recognize that while the
country is willing to pay heavily to escape invasion, it is incumbent on the Government
to exhaust every means before coming forward with
any such proposals, and especially
under the circumstances of the present time (Parliamentary Debates, 4th Series, vol. xc,
p. io<5o).
154
HALDANE AND ARMY REORGANIZATION
Moreover, conscription of the Prussian type found very few sup
1
porters in England. Those who were regarded as its advocates
were usually content to ask for something very different.
Some
asked for national training that is to say,
compulsory
military exercises during which the men would not be quartered
in a barracks or instruction
camp. The Webbs, faithful to their
principle of combining a Nationalist and Conservative policy
with a policy of social reform of a Socialist tendency, advocated
that the school age should be raised to seventeen or even
eighteen,
and military training given in connection with the curriculum.
And a system of the same kind was supported by Blatchford, the
Socialist jingo.
Others asked for what they called national service*. This was
the programme of an important league founded in 1903 by Lord
Roberts, who, in spite of his protests, was regarded by the public
as the
champion of conscription The four years of compulsory
.
military service which he demanded for young men between

eighteen and thirty involved nothing more than two months
training in an instruction camp in the first year, a fortnight in the
2
following three. But even in this extremely attenuated form
conscription aroused invincible opposition.
This repugnance to compulsory military service was a senti
ment of which the vast majority of Englishmen had learned to be
it came from the heart of their liberalism. It was in vain
proud;
that the defenders of conscription pleaded that the system was in
no way opposed either to the spirit of Anglo-Saxon civilization,
since the Australian Commonwealth had accepted it, or even to
the British Constitution, since balloting had been the old method
of recruiting the militia, and if the system had long since fallen into
desuetude it was only because every year Parliament automatic
ally suspended the Ballot Act. It was equally useless to remind the
opponents of conscription that the England of Crecy and Agin-
court hadknown compulsory military service, that Wellington s
1
Spencer "Wilkinson, Britain at Bay, 1909, asked for two years of military service for the
infantry and artillery, three years for the cavalry and mounted infantry, the men in some
cases to remain in the service up to the age of thirty-nine.
2
The National Service Journal, No. i, November 1903. For schemes of a similar nature see
further G. C. Coulton, A
Strong Army in a Free State: A
Study of the Old English and Modern
Swiss Militia, 1900. Richard Benett of Liverpool, Two Million Civilian Soldiers of the Queen,
1900; Samuel Smith, National Defence*, a letter in The Times and an article from the
Spectator, March I, 1902. See further the Utopian and imaginative scheme sketched by
Kudyard Kipling in four articles entitled The Army of the Dream (Morning Post, June 15,
i<5, 17, 18, 1904).
155
s sailors wholly or almost wholly, had been
troops in part, Nelson
conscripts and that until 1870 the Liberals had been as strongly
opposed to compulsory education as to conscription. It was labour
lost. These arguments fell on deaf ears, for popular prejudice was
stronger than any argument. We must not be deceived by the

fact that a number of English Socialists advocated in a modified
form a system of conscription. They were but a handful of eccen
tric individuals. The existing system of voluntary enlistment had
no more hearty defenders than the trade unions which detested
conscription. The same divergence of outlook became evident
whenever the question of the army was discussed at an inter
national Socialist congress. All the Continental Socialists advo
cated a militia system, the nation in arms in place of an army
trained in barracks. But it was in vain that they attempted to per
suade the Labour party to accept a programme identical with
that which was being advocated by the British Conservatives.
Popular prejudice was, moreover, reinforced by the serious

financial and even military arguments invoked by the opponents
of conscription in support of their instinctive dislike.
In the first place, we must remember that in the case of Great
Britain the problem of national defence presented a totally differ
ent aspect from that which it possessed in the case of the great
Continental Powers. Because the latter were Continental, they
were obliged before all else to maintain large standing armies to
protect their soil against the possible invasion of their land
frontiers. Only when this had been done could they bear the
expense, if sufficiently wealthy, of supporting a fleet to increase

their prestige on distant seas, annex a colonial empire and protect
its communications with the mother
country. The United King
dom, on die contrary, had only maritime frontiers. Its first neces
sity therefore was a navy, and an army was but a secondary
weapon, whether for the defence of the mother country or the
annexation and defence of Colonies. Throughout the whole or
almost the whole of the nineteenth century the army had indeed
cost more than the navy. But this was because of the fact that a
professional army, however small, is expensive and that England

had only one rival at sea namely, France, and she was far less
formidable than she had been in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries. From the moment when, towards the close of the cen
tury, the number of great naval powers increased, England had
156
found herself compelled to increase her navy so as to be in a posi
tion to meet a possible combination of hostile fleets. The cost of
the navy had equalled, then exceeded, the cost of the army. The
demands of the South African War had once more increased to a
formidable extent the expenditure upon the army. But this was
an abnormal and a temporary phenomenon. In 1904 the army
estimates fell to .29,225,000 as against a navy estimate of
36,830,ooo. Would it now be found necessary to reverse the
:L
proportion? Possibly, if England must indeed maintain an army

comparable in size with those of France and Germany and at the
same time a navy stronger than the French and German com
bined. But was such an army necessary? Yes, if England were in
fact exposed to the danger of invasion, the landing on her shores
of a large Continental army.
The question engaged the attention of the Committee of
Imperial Defence created at the beginning of 1903 by Arthur
Balfour, the Prime Minister. It would seem that originally the
composition of the Committee was not fixed and that to each
meeting the Premier, the sole permanent member, invited what
ever members of the cabinet, Generals, Admirals or experts in a
particular department he thought fit. Gradually, it seems to have
become the custom that any person once invited should be invited
every year, and that the inner Committee should be composed
of permanent members, a number of highly placed functionaries,
Ministers or otherwise, civilians and soldiers. The custom grew
up of inviting the heads of the Government Departments and
also, when opportunity offered, statesmen from the Dominions.
Five years after its creation Lowell, in his study of the British
1
Taking as typical those years during which the British Government was able to re
duce the expenditure on national defence to a rninimum, we find the following propor
tion between the army and navy estimates Financial year 1858-9: Army estimates
.13,295,000, Navy estimates 19,215,000; Financial year 1870-1: Army estimates
.14,124,000, Navy estimates 8,970,000. Then both figures rise, but the second more
rapidly than the first. In 1895-6 the cost of the navy for the first time exceeded the cost
of the army: 19,724,000 as against 18,460,000. Period of the Boer War Budget of
1901-2: Army estimates 92,542,000, Navy estimates 31,030,000. Budget of 1904-5:
Army estimates 29,225,000, Navy estimates 36,830,000. Wemust remember that in
the case of an imperial* power like Great Britain such figures can be disputed. If the
Colonies contributed nothing or almost nothing, to the normal defence of the Empire, it
was not the same with the land forces. Sir Charles Dilke (H. of C, February 23, 1903,
Parliamentary Debates, 4th Series, vol. ocviii, pp. 543-4) estimated that when India, the
Dominions, and the forces under the control of the Foreign and Colonial Offices were
taken into account, the total sum expended by the British Empire on her land armaments
exceeded 50,000,000. These and the following calculations are therefore true only of
the mother country, the United Kingdom.
157
Constitution, still expressed doubts as to the future of the Com
mittee. 1 But the following years would prove it a hardy and
vigorous institution. When

war came the Committee would
assume supreme control of military operations on behalf of the
United Kingdom and the entire Empire. Meanwhile, in peace
time it functioned as the supreme council for military and naval
defence, to whose decision both the War Office and the Admiralty
submitted their often conflicting plans. To transcend the profes
sional limitations of the military and naval experts and co-ordi
nate army and navy in the wider interest of the nation and Empire
was the principal function of the Committee. But it rapidly tended
to become a sort of super-cabinet, half civilian, half military,
whose institution constituted an important innovation in British
constitutional history. 2 It had not been in existence for two years
when of the danger of invasion was brought
this critical question
before it. The was made that the regular army was
supposition
engaged in a foreign campaign far from Britain and the naval
squadrons were all in distant waters. Lord Roberts was asked
what was the size of the army with which, in his opinion, in view
of all the difficulties and risks of transport, an enemy might con
template invading Great Britain. He replied that he thought it
possible to land a foreign army of 70,000 men. The Committee
came to the conclusion with, it would seem, at least the provi
sional agreement of Lord Roberts, that a force of 70,000, suppos
ing it were possible to land it, would be too small to attempt an
attack upon London. And it was far from certain that the landing
would be possible. Steam transport, wireless telegraphy, sub
marines were all inventions which favoured the defence. In short,
a foreign army fighting on British soil was not a serious possibi
3
lity. Balfour
in the speech in which he explained the Committee s
*.
1
Committee is intended to deal not only with estimates, but with larger questions
"The
of military policy. But whether the result will be permanently attained, or whether the
Committee will meet with the usual fate and find itself absorbed by details of administra
tion and of expenditure is yet to be seen/ (A. Lawrence Lowell, The Government ofEngland,
vol. i, p. 105.) For the origins and development of the Committee see the
interesting infor
mation in Arnold-Forster, The Army in 1906, 1906, p. 388; and General Sir Ian Hamilton,
Compulsory Service: A Study of the Question in the Light ofExperience, 1911 Introduction by
;
the Right Hon. R. B. Haldane, pp. 15-17.

8
For the serious nature of this innovation which might be regarded as violating the
principle of ministerial responsibility see the debate in the House of Commons, March 5,
1903 (Parliamentary Debates, 4th Series, vol. cxviii, pp. 1570 sqq.).
3
H. of C., May n, 1905 (ibid., vol. odvi, pp. 62 sqq. especially p. 70). Balfour s lan
guage is clearly calculated to give the impression that Lord Roberts agreed with the
Committee. But was this anything more than a rhetorical artifice? This at any rate is
158
views to the House of Commons considered the possibility he
was careful to add immediately purely hypothetical of a French
army, embarked at Brest or Cherbourg, landing on the south
coast.The supposition was a transparent device which deceived
nobody barely a month before Delcasse s fall when the Tangier
incident held public attention. It was Germany which was in the
mind of Balfour and his audience. But because fear of Germany
continued to grow during the years which followed, the Com
mittee found itself obliged in November 1907 to study the ques
tion afresh to reassure die public. As in 1905 it reached the con
clusion that invasion (so long as our naval supremacy is assured
against any reasonably probable combination of Powers) by a

force assumed, for purposes of calculation, to be 70,000 men, is
impracticable*.
We must be careful not to misunderstand the argument which
Balfour developed on May n, 1905 a speech in which he ex
pounded the views of what was known as the Blue Water School
because it regarded the blue water surrounding Britain as her
rampart. Balfour did not say the fleet is there, sleep in peace .
This would not have met the contention of the advocates of con
scription that a conscript army by mounting guard
over the coast
would release the fleet for distant operations. It was the view of
the Admiralty, shared by the Committee of Imperial Defence,
that even in the absence of the fleet, mines and submarines were
sufficient to defend the coast. As for the ill-organized reserve
forces, militia, volunteers, and yeomanry, neither soldiers nor

sailors took them into serious consideration. Professional soldiers
had no interest in the militia except as a recruiting ground for the
regular army. They were content to leave the volunteers, whom
they despised, to their customary disorganization. This
was a
source of considerable embarrassment to the advocates of con-
certain. Six years later at a time, moreover, when the creation of the territorial army had
strengthened the reserve forces, his point of view was entirely different (Fallacies and Facts
1911, pp. 120 sqq.). Cf. the article signed Master Mariner in the Contemporary Review for
the War
February 1909, inspired, Lord Roberts affirms in his criticism of the article, by
Office. Further, Balfour in his speech did not seem to contemplate an invading force of
more than 5,000. The question was again submitted in November 1907 to a sub-committee
of the Committee of Imperial Defence. Its conclusions were given to the House of
Commons by Asquith on July 29, 1909 (Parl. Deb., Commons, 1909, 5th Ser.,
vol.
viii, who on this occasion envisaged once more the possibility of a force of
pp. 1356 sqq.),
70,000 invading England. But the implications of such a figure must be realized.
We
should , he said, have a home army not only adequate to repel raids . . but a much more
.
serious thing to compel an enemy which contemplates invasion to come with such sub
stantial force as to make it impossible for them to evade our fleet* (ibid., p. 1388).
159
scription they were unwilling

to avow openly that, if they
wanted a citizen army, it was for entirely different reasons. They
were obliged to admit that the needs of the navy took precedence
over those of the army, and accept the proportion laid down as
normal by the Navy League between the respective expenditure
on the army and the navy, twenty-four as against thirty-six
million. They were content to urge the necessity of increasing the
expenditure on the army pari passu with the increase in naval

expenditure to provide for other needs than those we have men
tioned hitherto. What were they? To answer the question we
must first study the various and complicated functions which the
regular army fulfilled.
The primary function of the British army was to garrison the

vast extent of the British Empire, to maintain internal order, and
protect the frontiers. In North America there were garrisons in

Bermuda and at Halifax. On the route to India and the Far East
garrisons were stationed at Gibraltar, in Malta, at Singapore, in
Mauritius, and at Hongkong. A

brigade three battalions, in all
over four thousand troops constituted the army of occupation
in Egypt. After the restoration of peace in South Africa it had
been necessary to leave a force of twenty-five thousand in the
country and there was no reason to suppose that it could be
reduced in the near future. Finally there were fifty-two battalions
seventy-six thousand men in British India and at Aden.
Obviously these outposts could not be permanently occupied by
an army of young conscripts serving two or three years with the
colours. More seasoned troops, inured to a lengthy period of life
in barracks, were necessary. The system of short service enlist
ments in existence at the period of the Boer War was only a
system of short service by comparison with the long service of the
period before 1872. Measured by Continental standards the seven
years enlistment substituted for the previous twelve was an
extraordinarily long service. And it was to furnish the necessary
troops to replenish the foreign garrisons, constantly reduced by
disease or as the men s term of service expired, that Cardwell, the
Secretary for War, had devised in 1871 that system of linked

battalions whose principle we have already had occasion to ex-
160
plain. Each regiment was composed of two battalions. One of
these was on service abroad. The other, the home battalion, while
kept in constant readiness to take part in a campaign abroad,
served as a recruiting ground and training barracks for the foreign
unit. 1
The system was not always easy to work. When after 1895 the
Government embarked on a policy of imperialist annexation the
number of battalions serving abroad increased so considerably
that it was no longer possible to provide each with a home
battalion. And home battalions had been
despatched to distant
Colonies. On one occasion, against all precedent, a battalion of
the Guards had been sent to garrison Gibraltar. But the system had
broken down completely when, in 1899, it became necessary to
rush a large army to South Africa. This was a problem for which
itwas plain that CardwelTs system of linked battalions could pro
vide no solution, and the British nation began to realize the danger
to which it would be exposed, sooner or later, of a war far more
serious than the Boer War, in which to resist a European foe it
would be necessary to employ not only the entire navy but the
entire army as well.
To what quarter did it seem likely that this expeditionary force,
which had to be improvised at the end of 1899, would be sent?
The traditional view, common to War Office and the Admir
the
alty, envisaged its despatch after the conclusion of the Boer War
to British India to meet the Russian menace. 2 The British navy
1
For CardwelTs system see the excellent chapter by General Sir Robert Biddulph,
LordCardwell at the War Office; A History of his Administration 1868-1874, 1904, pp. 161 sqq.
* L.
S. Amery, The Problem of the Army, 1903 (the preface is dated November
i) p. 146:
*The Russian Empire can fairly be described as our most formidable and also most prob
able military adversary. H. of C., March 7, 1904, Arnold-Forster s speech: *. We pro
. .
pose to complete during the next year 108 field guns and eighteen Royal Horse Artillery
guns .India is the only possible place of contact with a great European Army
. . There
will be greater value for these guns in India than there would be here, and therefore we
propose to assign to India practically the whole of the output of these guns for the coming
year* (Parliamentary Debates, 4th Series, vol. cxxxi, pp. 342-3). H. of C., March 9, 1904,
Balfour s speech : Though I do not believe that this landing of a great organized force .
. . . . .
is possible, no man can blind himself to the fact that the whole trend of circumstances in
the East is to make us a Continental Power conterminous with another great military Con
tinental Power, and that is the dominating circumstance which we have to take into
account in framing our Army Estimates (ibid., vol. cxxxi, pp. 623-4). H. of C., June 28,
1904, Arnold-Forster s speech: We have had the guidance of the Committee of
. . .
Defence . upon the general problem as to the work the Army has to do outside the
. .
United Kingdom and we have realized that oversea work would be the great demand on
our Army. Of all the problems of oversea the most pressing, the most definite in one
sense, the most indefinite in another sense, must be the problem which may arise on the
only great land frontier we have.The Indian problem is a very complicated one. . . .*
(ibid., vol. cxxxvi, p. 1497). H. of C., May n, 1905, Balfour s great speech (ibid., vol.
161
would therefore be responsible for conveying an enormous
army
from Europe to Asia, either by rounding South Africa or travers
ing the Mediterranean, where, as in a closed vessel, the ambitions
of a host of different nations clashed. The transport of the British
troops to South Africa had been a brilliant success, which had
aroused universal admiration at a time when Britain s
military
organization was the object of severe and well-merited criticism.
But it would have been impossible if the seas had been scoured
by hostile cruisers and submarines, and the German naval law of
1900, while increasing the danger of this, suggested new possibi
to British sailors the despatch of an
lities
expeditionary force to
Flanders to meet a German invasion, side by side with the French
army and the small Belgian army, or preferably to Hanover to

create a diversion.
It was a new
problem which at once involved a concerted plan
between the army and the navy. The Admiralty laid down as a
fundamental principle that an expeditionary force could not be
transported abroad until the seas had been cleared of the enemy.
It must have time to win another
Trafalgar. This would require
nine months at most. It would then be able to undertake the
transport of an army. It was an obstacle which die impatience of
the War Office could ill brook. But an obstacle
perhaps which
had its advantages in the eyes of the champions of conscription.
The latter, as we have seen, did not advocate conscription in the
full sense.
They did not claim that the short periods of military
service which their programme demanded would enable those
who had performed them to go to the front immediately a war
was declared. But if they were mobilized at once the delay im
posed on the "War Office by the tactics of the Admiralty would
give time for an intensive training. When after some months
the Admiralty declared the seas clear
they could be profitably
amalgamated with the old professional army. Thus, without
daring to say so publicly for fear of alienating still further a public
opinion already hostile, the advocates of National Service con
templated the possibility of sending British conscripts on active
odvi, pp. 78 sqq,). Ten months later the tone has completely changed: H. of C, March 8,
1906, Haldane s speech: . . . A
short time ago we were menaced on the N.W. frontier of
India by Russia, Are we menaced by Russia today? (Cries of No.) Have circumstances
changed or have they not? Are they not different from what they were? If circumstances
have changed, is it necessary to maintain that vast establishment in India, which causes us
at home inevitably to incur a large expenditure in
keeping up the materials from which to
supply drafts for the Indian Army? (ibid,, vol. cliii, p. 675),
162
service abroad. Not to India, indeed; that was out of the question.
But possibly to the Continent. If in 1805 England had possessed
a conscript army, it would not have taken herself and her allies
ten years hard struggle to complete Trafalgar by Waterloo.
Thetask of reorganizing the army was begun in 1901 in the

midst of the Boer War by Lord Lansdowne s successor at theWar
Office, St. John Brodrick. For the moment he refrained from
asking for conscription. Without adopting that extreme measure
he determined to imitate the German model and put an end once
and for all to the condition of sheer chaos which had come to seem
the natural state of the British
army nothing but isolated regi
ments, no regular grouping of brigades, divisions, or army corps,
and no centre of organization except the War Office. He proposed,
and actually began to carry into effect, the establishment of six
army corps in the United Kingdom. There were to be three in
the South of England, one in the North, one in Ireland, and one
in Scotland. Each army corps constituted a complete and perma
nent unit with its staff, its infantry, its cavalry, its artillery, its
medical corps, and its commissariat. A valuable work of decen
tralization would thus be accomplished. The fact that so much
would be done within each army corps would relieve consider
ably the congestion at the War Office. And on the other hand a
sudden international crisis would not find the country unprepared
as it had been in 1899. Three of these army corps would be kept
in readiness for active service, which would mean a force of
twenty thousand available for immediate despatch abroad. Several
measures were taken to obtain the necessary number of recruits.
The pay was raised from yd. in 1896 to 1/6 in 1904. The condi
tions of life in barracks were improved; the soldiers were treated
a little more men, a little less as machines. Brodrick further
as
devised a new
system of short-service enlistments three years
with the colours, nine in the reserve which had the advantage
of attracting more recruits. And if their period of service was
shorter, they remained liable to be called up at any moment. Here
too conscription apart the German model was followed. Fin
ally,
to prevent the constant depletion of the home battalions to
replenish those on foreign service, Brodrick, abandoning for the

time the system of linked battalions, created a Royal Garrison
first
Regiment to invite the enlistment of soldiers who, having com

pleted their period of service, were willing to lead at Gibraltar,
for example, or in Malta an easy and inactive life as sentinels of
the empire. 1
But the scheme immediately aroused lively criticism, 2 both
from the Gladstonians, who thought that it went too far, and the
Imperialists, who thought that it was on the wrong lines. The
former protested against the serious cost of maintaining perma
nently six army corps. It would involve, they argued, when the
system was in full working, an annual expenditure upon the
army of ^40,000,000. The latter denounced Brodrick as an
illusionist. Only the first three army corps were genuine army
corps. The other three existed only on paper and were a mixture
of professional and volunteers. It was to a motley force of
soldiers
this kind that was proposed to entrust the defence of Great
it
Britain when the expeditionary force had gone abroad! And
finally there was one point on which everyone agreed,, that Brod-
rick s scheme must be modified. The enlistments for three years
had worked well when recruits were wanted in large numbers
for a war which could not last very long. But the system became
unworkable when soldiers were needed to relieve the garrisons
in distant colonial possessions. Soldiers were actually being sent
out to India to serve only ten months, And about the summer of
1903 the War Office began to find itself unable to obtain recruits
even on these terms. These distant garrisons were rapidly becom
3
ing depleted.
1
For an account of Brodrick s system see his speech, H. of C., March 8, 1901 (Parlia
mentary Debates, 4th Series, vol. xc, pp. 1052 sqq.).
8
H. of C., February 24, 1903, debate on Beckett s amendment to the address (ibid.,
Winston Spencer ChurchiU, Mr. Brodrick s Army, 1903. L. S.
vol. cxviii, pp. 682 sqq.).
Amery, The Problem of the Army, 1903, Chap. II, pp. 19 sqq.
8
I have had means of
finding out for certain, what the newspapers have so often guessed
at, that the first four War Secretaries have with the greatest difficulty been able to supply
sufficient drafts for India. Sums of so much as ^15 of the taxpayers money what were
they but bribes? have been paid to soldiers in India, to get them to extend their service.
Men suffering imprisonment in military prisons here in England have been released before
the expiration of their sentences, on condition that they would "volunteer" for some
regiment in India (Robert Edmondson, Ex-Squadron Sergeant-Maj or, John Bull s Army
from Within, with an Introduction by Arnold White, 1907).
164
When the Cabinet was reconstituted in September 1903, Brod-

rick was banished from the War Office, like his predecessor Lord
Lansdowne at the end of 1900. He went to the India Office and
was succeeded at the War Office by Arnold-Forster, who had
made a reputation as an expert student of the problem of army
reform. 1 It was a
problem whose solution seemed more urgent
than ever when the report of the Royal Commission appointed
at the end of 1902 to inquire into the preparations for the Boer
War and the conduct of the early operations had just been made
2
public. In its report, which appeared in August, the Commission
had censured the absence of a plan of campaign, and of an expe
ditionary force ready for immediate embarkation, the lack of
information, the insufficient supply of horses and means of trans
port, and the disorganization of the War Office. Arnold-Forster s
position at the War Office was in one respect easier, in another
more difficult, than Brodrick s had been. Easier, because unlike
his predecessor he was not obliged to
prepare his plans for re
organization in the middle of a war. More difficult because in
1903 the public, war-weary, had begun to demand economies
rather than reforms, the reduction of the expenditure upon the
army rather than its organization. Arnold-Forster was faced with

the problem of achieving more than his predecessors with less
money.
His work of reform was twofold. It was in the first place a
reorganization of the War Office, secondly a reorganization of

the army itself.
The Commission of Inquiry into the Boer War had denounced
abuses rather than proposed remedies. It had however indicated
the general lines on which a reform of the War Office should
3
proceed, and one of its members, LordEsher, in a special appen-
1
See his work, The War Office, the Army and the Empire: A review of the Military Situation
in 1900 with a Preface by the Rt. Hon. The Earl ofRosebery, 1900.
. . .
2
Royal Commission onthe War in South Africa : A
Commission appointed to inquire into the
military preparations for the War of South Africa and into the supply ofmen r ammunition equip
ment and transport by sea and in campaign and into the military operations up to the Occupation
of Pretoria. Appointed in October 1902, it consisted of Lord Elgin, the Chairman, and
eight other members, among them Lord Esher. It heard a hundred and fourteen witnesses
and reported on August 25, 1903. A
very complete summary will be found in The Times
for August 26.
8
Report* p. 132 sqq.
165
1
dix had given a more definite shape to the plan suggested by the
Commission. Lord Esher and his colleagues had criticized the
anomalous position of the Commander-in-Chief, in relation to
the Secretary for War. It had not been defined by law or custom.
The Commission also recalled that Lord Harrington s Commis
sion had in 1890 advised the abolition of the post, that it had
nevertheless been retained, although with reduced
powers, by the
Unionist Government of 1895 and that the Commander-in-Chief,
Lord Wolseley, had taken advantage of the Boer War to extend
his authority, an
attempt which had led to considerable friction.
The Commission recommended that the Commander-in-Chief
should be replaced by an Inspector-General wholly independent
of the War Office whose function it would be to present an
annual report, showing how far the wishes of Parliament had
been carried out in the organization of the army. Further, the
Commission, repeating recommendations made both by the
2 3
Harrington Commission and a Committee of ipoi advised that
to secure unity and continuity of policy, the joint authority of the
departments of the War OiEce should be reinforced by combining

the various branches of the service in an organization which
would occupy a position in regard to the army similar to that of
the Board of Admiralty in regard to the navy. Arnold-Forster
had scarcely entered the War Office when, in concert with the
Prime Minister, Balfour, he appointed a small committee of three
Lord Esher, Admiral Sir John Fisher, and Sir George Clarke,
the future Lord Sydenham, to work out these recommendations
in a detailed form. Three long reports published in rapid succes
sion satisfied the reformers. 4 At uie same time to strengthen the
Committee of Imperial Defence and protect it against the possible
whims of some mture Liberal premier, the. Committee recom
mended that should be turned into a regular department of
it
state
by setting up a permanent secretariat to consist of a repre-
1
Report, p. 144 sqq.
1
Preliminary and farther Reports of the Royal Commissioners appointed to inquire into the
Civil and Professional Administration of the Naval and Military Departments, and the relations
of these departments each other and to the Treasury, 1890, p. xxi.

to
8
Its Sir Clinton Dawkins. Its object was among others to inquire whe
chairman was
ther the present method of conducting the administrative and financial business of the
War Office and its distribution as between the Civil and Military Departments is satisfac
tory*and to suggest methods which would bring the work of the War Office more into
harmony with that of large business undertakings .
*
War Office (Reconstitution) Committee. First Report, January 1 8, 1904. Second Report,
February 26, 1904. Third Report, March 9, 1904.
166
sentative of the army and a representative of the navy with their
subordinates. Its function would be to furnish the civilian mem
bers of the Committee with all the technical information they
might require and also though this was not directly stated to
enforce conformity to the official policy if the civilians were
suspected of deviating from it.
On this, as on other points, the recommendations of the Com

mittee were immediately carried into effect.The first report had
scarcely been published on February i, when Arnold-Forster
instituted the ArmyCouncil, a copy of the Board of Admiralty,
for which the Committee had asked. The Committee had recom
mended that all its members should be new men. He carried out
its recommendation. So far as the three civilian members were
concerned, this was effected automatically, since he had brought

with him to the War Office a new under-secretary and a new
financial secretary. But the four military members were also new
comers, not one of whom had previously been at the War Office.
They were the Chief of General Staff, responsible for collecting
information and making the strategic preparations for a war, the
Adjutant-General in charge of die personnel, the Quarter-Master
General in charge of supplies, and the Master General of the
Ordnance responsible for the artillery and fortifications. There
was no longer any Commander-in-Chief, and the first Inspector-
General, whose functions were very strictly limited, was the
King s brother, the Duke ot Connaught. The Government
attempted to obtain for the new council the express sanction of a
statute. But the Bill was dropped, it would seem because the
opposition of constitutionalists who disliked this supervision of

responsible ministers by a bureaucratic institution had proved
embarrassing. The Army Council was set up notwithstanding by
1
letters patent and an order in council. It was a permanent institu
tion, altogether different from the War Office Council set up
during the Boer War by Brodrick, which derived all its authority
from the Prime Minister, or the Army Board, of which the
Commander-in-Chief, not the Secretary for War, had been
chairman and which, revived in 1900, had disappeared once more
1
For this opposition see H. of L., July 29, 1904, Lord Spencer s speech (Parliamentary
Debates, 4th Series, vol. aoocbc, pp. 71 sqq.), and for the entire question the explanations
given by R. B. Haldane, H. of L., April 6, 1009 (ibid., 1909, 5th Ser., vol. iii, pp. 934
sqq.)-
I6 7
with the restoration of peace. 1 In 1905 all the detailed arrange*-

mcnts of the various branches of the service were reorganized and
2
brought into conformity with the four new departments. The
reform marked an epoch in the development of British military
bureaucracy, and British bureaucracy in general. Arnold-Forster
was less successful when he tackled a vaster problem, the reform
of the army itself.
We might have expected that his work of reform would have

been made easier by the Royal Commission on the militia and
3
volunteers appointed in 1903, which reported on May 20, 1904.
But if the report established the urgent necessity of reform, it
contained practically no useful suggestions as to the reforms which
should be made. As regards the militia the Commission suggested
that the periods of training and of service should be lengthened
and brigades and divisions set up; as regards the volunteers, an
alterationof the system according to which the Government
grants were made, the institution at the War Office of a special
for the volunteers, and again the establishment of
department
brigades and divisions. But it made these recommendations with
great hesitation, or rather with indifference. The real conclusion
theCommission reached was that since the five great Continental
powers had possessed a conscript army for the last quarter of a
century, England by her refusal to follow their example placed
herself in the event of a war with any one of than in an inferior
positionfrom the start. Conscription therefore should be adopted

not even the modified system of the Swiss militia. This proves
what a strong hold the principle of conscription possessed over
military opinion. But how fantastic a
suggestion of this kind
was!
It is sufficient to read the report to perceive that the all but
1
Report of Royal Commission on the War in South Africa, pp. 138 sqq.
*
Memorandum of the Secretary of State relating to the Army Estimates for 1905~6, pp. 7 sqq.
3
Militia and Volunteers (Royal Commission) Report of the Royal Commission on the Militia
and Volunteers with Appendices t May 20, 1904. The Commission which consisted of eight
members, its chairman being the Duke of Norfolk, had been appointed to inquire into
the organization, numbers, and terms of service of the Militia and Volunteer Forces; and
to report whether any and if any, what changes are required in order to secure that these
forces shall be maintained in a condition of military efficiency and at an adequate strength*.
168
unanimous recommendations of the Commission were doomed
from the outset to remain a dead letter, and that throughout the
inquiry its members had been faced with departmental hostility
when they attempted to obtain the information which would
enable them to estimate exactly the risks of invasion against which
the country should take precautions. After the War Office had
informed them that the question they had to consider was the
provision for home defence of an army of three hundred thou
sand, including sixty-six thousand regulars, they had consulted
the Committee of Imperial Defence, which had pointed out that
since the Admiralty declared it impossible to land more than five
to ten thousand troops on the English coast there was no reason
to ask for these three hundred thousand. They had thereupon be
taken themselves to the Admiralty itself, which had declined to
give evidence, and then once more to the Committee of Imperial
Defence, whose chairman had been content to ask the Commis
sion not to enlarge unduly the field of its inquiries. 1 It was very
soon evident that the recommendations of the Commission had
no practical importance, and when die question was raised in the
House of Lords, Lord Lansdowne stated that in recommending
2
conscription the Commission had exceeded its powers. Arnold-
Forster s system was totally different.
An admirer and student of the German army, as with good
reason were all
military experts, Arnold-Forster had reached the
conclusion that an army quartered in barracks is superior to a
militia. This had been sufficiently proved by the way in which
General Chanzy s army had crumpled up in 1870 before the army
of Prince Frederick-Charles. It was out of the question to intro
duce the Prussian system into England and make all physically-fit
youths into soldiers living in barracks. The system already estab
lished in England must therefore be preserved a professional
army quartered in barracks and recruited by voluntary enlist
ment. Its organization, however, must be improved, while the

number of soldiers was reduced. This would satisfy at once the
Conservative demand for efficiency and the Liberal demand for
economy. He abandoned the system of linked battalions which

necessitated the maintenance at home of a number of battalions
equal to that of the battalions serving abroad. He announced his

1
Report of Royal Commission on Militia and Volunteers, pp. 4-5.
*
H. of L., June 27, 1904 (Parliamentary Debates, 4th Series, vol. cxxxvi, pp. 1210 sqq.)
169
intention to abandon Brodrick s

expensive system of six army
corps. What the army reformers demanded, and in particular the
Committee on the reorganization of the War Office, was a wide
measure of administrative decentralization. But to place the entire
burden of administering the army on the generals in command of
the army corps would merely relieve the War Office by over
burdening the generals. He divided the United Kingdom for
military purposes into a number of purely administrative districts.

As regards the command he announced his intention to substitute
for thearmy corps a too ambitious system which did not answer
the genuine needs of the country, a system of divisions, and at
the same time he promised to organize a striking force of sixteen
thousand men ready for immediate despatch abroad. He dissolved
nineteen battalions and proposed to equip the country with two
distinct military
organizations. On the one hand there would be a
hundred and four general service battalions with good pay and
service enlistments nine years with the colours, three in the
reserve. On the other hand there would be seventy-one home
service* battalions stationed in the counties and bearing their
names, commanded by subalterns of die general service army and

by officers
interchangeable with officers of the latter. It would be
the old militia but amalgamated with the regular army, the sole
difference being the easier conditions and far shorter terms of
service two years with the colours, six in the reserve, and lower
pay. The number of volunteers was reduced. The figure, reached
in 1904, of two hundred and fifty thousand was too
high.
A hun
dred and eighty thousand would be enough. Arnold-Forster
proposed to divide them into two classes. Sixty thousand, well
paid, compactly organized, and subjected to a more severe training
would constitute a genuine fighting force. The remaining hundred
and twenty thousand, who would receive only the training given
hitherto to all volunteers, would form a reserve which could be
1
profitably employed in the event of war.
As will appear later Arnold-Forster s scheme was not without
its
good points. It was a failure nevertheless. This was primarily
1
Arnold-Forster explained his system at Liverpool on January 28, 1904, to the House
of Commons on July 14 of the same year (Parliamentary Debates, 4th Series, vol. cxxrviii,
pp. 52 sqq.), and in 1906 in a volume entitled The Army in 1906: A Policy and a Vindication,
1906. Cf. Lord Haliburton, The Army Organization: The Arnold-Forster Scheme, 1905, and
Mrs. Arnold-Forster, TheRsghtHonourableHughOakeleyAmold-ForsterA Memoir, 1910,
pp.224$qq.
170
due to defects inherent in a system which experience would com
pel his successor to abandon. These long-service enlistments of
nine years had been adopted to satisfy the pressing need to re
plenish the garrisons depleted by the three-years system which the
necessities of the Boer War had forced on Brodrick. They had
proved successful; in India and elsewhere in 1905 the battalions
were at their full strength. But the system must inevitably break
down the moment the nine-years enlistments had to compete
with the two-years enlistments required to furnish the home-
service battalions.
Arnold-Forster therefore postponed the latter scheme and a
was a mere gesture. It was never
Militia Bill introduced in 1905
even debated. The reorganization of the volunteers was also post
poned. And he had further difficulties to face.
1
member of a A
Conservative Cabinet, he did not find it easy to overcome the
opposition of a host of vested interests. The speeches he delivered
in Parliament during 1905 give the impression of an animal hunted
down by a pack. 1 find I am dealing with at least six armies. I am
dealing with the Army in India, the Indian Army, the Army at
home, the Militia, the Volunteers, and the great army of those
who have left the colours and are now entrenched in the clubs of
2
this city/ In the Cabinet itself he had to suffer from the intrigues
of Lord Lansdowne and Brodrick, the two former Secretaries for
War, who had no wish to see Forster succeed where they had
failed and who spread the report that his plan represented only
his personal views not those of the Government as a whole.
Moreover, he belonged to a party in rapid decline and hastening

towards the defeat at the polls whose imminence no one doubted.
He was therefore exposed to a cross-fire, from the opposition
speakers and from the irregulars of his own party. He vanished

in 1905 in the general rout of the Unionists without having had
time to effect anything. In the new Cabinet Richard Burdon Hal-
dane took his place.
1
Memorandum of the Secretary of State relating to the Army Estimates for 1905-6, p. 6; also
Arnold-Forsier, The Army in 1906, p. 211.
*
H. of C M March 28, 1905 (Parliamentary Debates, 4th Series, vol. odiii, pp. 1419-20).
For the objections brought against his plan see especially the debate in the House of Lords
on July 29, 1904 (ibid., vol. oncrix, pp. 45 sqq.) i *&
2n< ^
e House of Commons, March
28, 1905 (ibid., vol. odiii, pp. 1398 sqq.).
171
We have witnessed Haldane s attempt to make himself Lord

Chancellor. When he saw him accept the War Office, Campbell-
Bannerman believed he had entrapped a colleague who hated
him, and whom he hated with equal cordiality. Serve him right/
an old friend wrote to the Premier on receipt of the
gleefully
news.1 For Sir Henry knew anyone how dearly the
better than
War Office might was his conduct of
cost a British politician. It
the department which in the summer of 1895 had been, if not the
real cause of the overthrow of the Liberal Cabinet, at any rate the
immediate Since then he had been the amused and often

pretext.
sarcastic witness of the unfortunate efforts made by his successors
Lord Lansdowne, John Brodrick, and finally Arnold-

St.
Forster. Leave the old army alone and don t make war/ The
2
device sums up his policy of inaction. Haldane was a politician of
the most active He was far too intelligent not to perceive the
type.
of the task he had so lightly assumed, as a member of a
difficulties
cabinet on principle indifferent to the army, and serving under a

chief who distrusted him. But he believed himself capable of over
of the unprecedented
coming them. Moreover, he was aware
which attached to this question of army reorganiza
importance
tion in the of the inevitable conflict with Germany. By
light
War Campbell-Bannerman flung him
him the Office a
giving
challenge. He took it up. 3
His first reform was the creation in September 1906 of a General
Staff. consisted of seventy-two officers who met at the War
4
It
Office with the Chief of Staff presiding to study problems of

1
A. Spender, The Life of the Right Hon. Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, vol. ii, p. 198.
J.
*
See his speech H. of C, February 5, 1904 (an amendment to the Address was being
debated complaining of England s unpreparedness for the Boer War) . . :The right
.
honourable gentleman says that in the time of his predecessor the defences of the colonies
were so neglected that there were only two battalions or 3,000 men in South Africa and
the Government had to raise the force. Yes, Sir, because the force depends upon your
that time there was no ground for fear whatever. The force was adjusted to the
At
policy.
policy. There are two policies that you can pursue in a case such as this. There is the policy
offeree and of threats resting upon force and on the other hand there is a policy of patience
and of peaceful and conciliatory negotiation* (Parliamentary Debates, 4th Series, vol. cxxix,
the Unionist Press was up in arms. See The Times, February
pp, 494-5). The following day
6, 1904: The Opposition cannot first obstruct the reinforcement of our Army and
. . .
then pose as censors of the Government for not reinforcing it,

8
For the work which Haldane accomplished at the War Office sec the interesting details
given by himself, Before the War, 1920, pp. 136 sqq.;
An Autobiography, 1929, pp. sqq.
i<58
with a sum
Army Order constituting a General Staff. The text will be found together
4
of
mary of Haldane s memorandum accompanying it in The Times September 13, 1906.
172
strategy. They followed in rotation and were obliged to return
to active service when their time on the General Staffhad expired.
Such was the new institution with which Haldane equipped the
War Office to provide, as he said, the British army with a brain\
In consequence the organization of die War Office, so long in
ferior to thatof the Admiralty, became superior to it. The army
was indebted to Arnold-Forster for an Army Council, a copy of
the Board of Admiralty. Haldane provided the Army Council
with a General Staff of which the Board of Admiralty possessed
no counterpart. From what source did he get the idea of his new
institution? From Germany as he frankly admitted. Moreover,
his institution of the General Staffhad been immediately preceded
by a journey to Berlin- to study German methods, which had
caused keen anxiety in Paris and alarmed the Foreign Office itself. 1
Haldane thus began to play the ambiguous role he would main
tain till 1914. An admirer, indeed a devotee of Germany, by his
constant declarations of affection for the Germans, his friendship
with the ambassador Metternich and his frequent visits to Ger
many, he reassured the advanced Liberals and the partisans of an
Anglo-German entente. On the other hand, knowing Germany
too well not to admire the genius for organization, military
organization in particular, which rendered her England s most
dangerous and entertaining nothing but contempt for paci
rival,
fist though at times to flatter Liberal opinion he used its
idealism,
phraseology, he prepared by German methods to wage war. with
Germany. This creation of a General Staff, however cleverly he
may have staged it, was not however his personal work. As2 early
as 1890 Lord Harrington s Commission had asked for it; and
Lord Esher s Committee again in I904. 3 Arnold-Forster on the
very eve of the fall of the Unionist Government had drawn up a
4
complete scheme, which except for a few modifications of detail
1
R. B. Haldane, Befcre the War, pp. 22 sqq. An Autobiography, pp. 89 sqq., 202 sqq.
; ;
British Documents . .
pp. 357-H59, 372-3 : see especially on p. 373 a minute by Sir
, vol. iii,
Eric Barrington attached as a note to despatch sent from Berlin on August 30 by Lord
Granville to Sir Edward Grey: We
have done all we could short of preventing Mrfe
Haldane from going to Berlin at all/
a and Further the Commissioners to
Preliminary Report (with Appendices) of Royal appointed
inquire into the Civil and Professional Administration of the Naval
and Military Departments and
the Relation of those Departments to each other and to the Treasury, 1890, pp. xxii-xxiii.
a
War Committee First Report, pp. 3-4. Second Report, pp. 21 sqq.
Office (Reconstitution)
by the Secretary of State for War on the General Staff of the Army, November
*
Memorandum
21, 1905; for the origin of this Memorandum, which was in fact die work of Sir Henry
Wilson, see Major-General Sir C. B. Callwell, Field-Marshal Sir Henry Wilson, His Life and
Diaries, vol. i, pp. 56 sqq. (especially pp. 63-4).
173
Haldane had copied. Moreover, had not Arnold-Forster on the

recommendation of Lord Esher and Sir John Fisher appointed as
his private secretary Colonel Ellison, who had drawn up the
Esher Committee Had he not on Colonel Ellison s
s
report?
recommendation placed on the Army Council as Quarter-
Master-General Sir William Nicolson who, under Brodrick, had
occupied a position amounting to that of Chief of Staff without
the title? And had there not teen in existence from the beginning
of 1904 a President of the Army Council who was entitled Chief
of General Staff and who could not exercise his functions ade
quately until a General Staff had been completely organized? Ah
irresistible forcewas pushing the Secretary for War, whoever he
might which he fondly imagined his personal
be, to take a step
initiative. That old Gladstonian, Campbell-Bannerman, had been
able to speak a very different language when he was a member of

Lord Harrington s Commission. We have no designs against our
European neighbours, Indian "military policy" will be settled in
India itself, and not in Pall Mall. In any of the smaller troubles
into which we may be drawn by the interests of some of our
dependencies, the plan of campaign must be governed by the

particular circumstances,
and would be left (I presume and hope)
1
to be determined by the officer appointed to direct operations.
And at the beginning of the Boer War Lord Wolseley appears to
have shared Campbell-Bannerman s opinion that it was not for
officials in to restrict by strategic orders the commander s
London
free initiative. Such views were now thoroughly out of date.
2
And it was a triumph indeed for an imperialist and a champion of

efficiency like Haldane to put the finishing touches to a military
reorganization inspired by principles wholly different from those
of the older school. The creed of scientific preparation and orga
nization was sweeping before it the philosophy of instinct,
improvization, and liberty.
But the ease with which on this

point Haldane overcame old
Liberal prejudices and succeeded where Arnold-Forster had suc
ceeded oefore him in reorganizing the headquarters staff was
1 Lord Harrington s Commission s Reports, p. xxbc.
*
Sec my History of the English People, vol. v, pp. 81-3.
174
matched by the difficulty of reorganizing the army itself. Here
Forster had failed and Haldane was likely to find the problem
even more difficult. For the new Parliament was more eager than
the Unionists had been to reduce expenditure on the army," and a
reduction was harder to effect than it had been at the close of the
Boer War, when on the one hand the return to a peace footing
had automatically diminished expenditure and on the other hand
a vast accumulation of unused material had made it possible to
reduce purchases on a large scale. Paul Cambon doubted Haldane s
success. To create an army money and men are required. The
Liberal Cabinet will not provide the money, the nation will not
1
provide the men. Haldane will not succeed. Haldane however
did succeed, not only in effecting economies without detriment
to the efficiency of the service, but actually in improving its effi
ciency and that not by round-about methods but by introducing
in 1907 acomprehensive measure, for which he secured from the
Premier the promise of ample time for its discussion and from the
Leader of the Opposition a pledge that no systematic obstruction
would make it impossible to pass the Bill before the end of the
2
session.
As regards the regular army (this had nothing to do with the
Army Bill of 1907: it was a work 3
of reorganization completed
before the Bill was introduced ). Haldane s method was very
similar to that which Forster had favoured, one which might be
forces. Thanks to a host of
fittingly called a concentration of
economies effected in the general expenditure, the army would
be less expensive, but at the same time it would be stronger, be
cause its organization was more compact. Anticipating the wishes
of the Liberal majority and thus obtaining forgiveness for his
effected economies which
reputation as an imperialist, Haldane
in
exposed him to violent attacks by the Unionist opposition,
1
Conversation reported by Colonel Repington, The Times, July 16, 1916.
7 Edw. 7, Cap. 9: An Act to provide for the reorganization of His Majesty military
a s
forces and for that purpose to authorize the establishment of County Associations and the
the Acts relating to the
raising and maintenance of a Territorial Force and for amending
Reserve Forces (Territorial and Reserve Forces Act, 1907). For Haldane s system see the pre
liminary outlines of 1906 explained in his speeches in the
House on March 8 and July 12,
1906 (reproduced in his book entitled Army Reform and Other Addresses, pp. 3 sqq.,4osqq.);
the Memorandum by the Secretary of State for War on Army Reorganization, July 30, 1906;
also the important speech delivered on February 25, 190? introducing the Army Bill (Army
Reforms and other Addresses, pp, 94 sqq.),
*
Haldanc s speech at Glasgow, January n, 1907; The Army Order of January I, 1907,
the Field Army for
also, the Memorandum on the Organisation for War of the Troops forming
Service Abroad, same date.
xrr^ft
."vr
175
particular by Arnold-Forster, who had become the bitter and
untiring critic of his successor s actions. 1 The
army estimates,
which had 92,500,000 in 1901 tofallen from
69,400,000 in"
*9 2 36,700,000 in 1903 (the first years of

>
complete peace),
29,200,000 in 1904, and 28,800,000 in 1905 continued to fall
to 27,800,000 in 1906, 27,100,000 in 1907 and 26,800,000
in 1908.
Haldane s procedure was to abolish a number of
units, and
instead of discharging the men who had filled them to
them in other branches of the employ
service, thus strengthening the
army while reducing expenditure and without increasing the total
number of troops. He decided to dissolve
eight battalions of the
line, and two battalions of Guards. He handed over the
defence of
the coast to the
Admiralty, thus freeing two thousand soldiers for
other service. The defence of the coast also
employed some twelve
thousand militiamen. These could now be used in other
ments of a semi-civih an character, to take the employ
place of regulars
who could be employed in other
ways. Moreover, profiting by
the mistakes of his two
predecessors, Haldane substituted for
Brodnck enlistments (three years in the
s
nine
regular army, in
the
reserve), which unduly inflated the reserve at the cost of the
regular army, and Arnold-Forster s enlistments
(nine years in the
regular army, three in the reserve), which incurred the
opposite
fault and made
impossible any other shorter term of enlistment
which would compete with the
longer-term enlistments, an inter
mediate system, seven
years in the regular army and five in the
reserve. The men secured by these various means he
an organization which was a return to the grouped in
system of linked batta
lions, seventy-two battalions of at home and an
infantry equal
number in the Colonies. Moreover, he abandoned the
system
Brodnck had inaugurated of
dividing these battalions into army
corps. Forster had intended to do this but had not had time to
carry out his intention. Haldane was content to
group them in
divisionsof fifteen thousand men, on the model of the
divisions
in the Indian
army. Six divisions with four brigades of cavalry
", i
f M ch
"
8>July I906 (Prtiamentary Debates, 4 th Series, vol. cliii, pp 686
I3>
C
*
,"
9 Lettcr t0 The Times undcr

rrl T? VV" Sqq0H f tidc Haldane s Scheme
S ctev\^ 5>
I907) C J
"
"
m
5 ? I9 7 March *
<M
* (Parl
.
** Ser.,
qq 7 A X ? <>>>
Sqq-: V L Cbcxvi> pp 492 S(

W
,
vol -,%
i ? i t -
-
:Commons, 1909, jth Ser.
eeds and
176
and the artillery and engineers necessary to support them were
all
kept in constant readiness, either to supply the men needed to

relieve the garrisons abroad, or to be despatched after the reserves
had been mobilized to make war outside the United Kingdom-
There was a total force, with the reserves, of about a hundred and
sixty thousand. This expeditionary force was, though on a much
vaster scale, the striking-force Arnold-Forster had in vain attemp
ted to form during his two years tenure of office.
Behind this army of the first line, but in close association with
it, Haldane created (this was one of the provisions of the Act of
1907) a special reserve which would differ from the militia by

the fact that its officers and non-commissioned officers would be
regulars and its recruits would take an engagement to serve
abroad in case of war. But it would be recruited from the same
sources as the militia had been. The enlistments, which would be
for six years, would involve six months training at the outset
followed by periods of a fortnight a year, with the same pay as
the soldiers in the regular army received. There was no need for
the hundred and twenty-four battalions of which the militia had
consisted. A number of battalions equal to those of the regular
army would suffice and they could be attached to the latter as

reserve battalions in the proportion of one, two, or three battalions
to every regiment of two battalions in the regular army. The
battalions of the special reserve would not be allowed to fall below
a strength of five or six hundred. Arnold-Forster protested that
Haldane was simplyreviving his own scheme for reforming the
militia.His protest was justified and it was apparently to give him
satisfaction that the Bill of 1907 was amended on this point. In its
Bill presented the special reserve as a new
original form the
force, created in toto by Haldane, something entirely apart from
the militia and volunteers. In the statute as it emerged from the
debates the special reserve was presented as a transformation of
the militia. But was Arnold-Forster equally right when he went
further, accused Haldane of wantonly ruining his system, and
argued that the periods of training prescribed by the
new measure
were too short to turn out genuine soldiers? Haldane could reply
that these short periods were inevitable if a sufficient number of
recruits was to be secured and that their training could be com
pleted, either when they were incorporated into the regular army
or, on the outbreak of war, were organized in battalions and sub-

177
jccted to a lengthy training, and further that for men placed

tinder regular military discipline and brought into close contact
with professional soldiers the brevity of their training would have
the advantage of forging a closer lint between the regular
army
and the civil population.
It was in the matter of a second-line force in the strict sense that
Haldane departed from Arnold-Forster. The latter, faithful to

his method of concentrating the organization of the
army, wanted
to reduce the number of volunteers, and make of the remainder a
nucleus, better trained than had been the case hitherto and more
capable of fighting an army entirely trained in barracks. Haldane
on the contrary bore in mind the principle laid down by Lord
Elgin s Commission: That no military system will be satisfactory
which does not contain powers of expansion outside the limit of
the regular forces of the Crown, whatever that limit may be/ 1
And it was to the volunteers that he looked to ensure this power
of expansion. Unlike Forster he did not want their numbers
reduced. On the contrary he wanted them more numerous. Not
indeed to repel an invasion. For that task a small body would be
sufficient, and the guard kept by the navy rendered the eventuality
doubtful. But to reinforce the expeditionary force when the
latter, having faced on the Continent the enemy s initial attack,
would need to make up its losses and receive reinforcements.
This volunteer force need not be completely trained, but all its
members, while acquiring without interruption of their normal
life a modicum of
military training and some experience of camp
life, were invited to take an engagement that on the outbreak of
war they would undergo the lengthy training necessary to trans
form them into competent soldiers.
Haldane therefore completely reorganized the second-line force,
incorporating into a new army, to which he gave the name Terri
torial Force, whatever was left of the militia after its bulk had
been formed into the Special Reserve, the Yeomanry which
2
required little
change, anid the Volunteers. The latter were res-
1
Report ofRoyal Commission on the War in South Africa, p. 83.
a For the origins and history of the Territorial Army see three articles in The Times,
April i and 2 ,and May 7, 1929, entitled A Citizen Army*.
178
cued from the state of disorganization in which
they had stag
nated for half a century. He abolished, thus effecting a reform
Forster had proposed, the capitation grant, a government bounty
given to the officers commanding volunteer battalions whose

amount was calculated by the number of men under their com
mand. For it was an encouragement to enlist the largest possible
number of men without regard to capacity or training, a pre
mium on the enlistment of ineffitients*. 1 In future the volunteers
would receive pay fixed by the Government, and their officers
would have no interest in their enlistment, their duties being con
fined to commanding and training the men. The system imposed
upon the soldiers of the new territorial army was not however
very severe. They would be enlisted between the ages of eighteen
and twenty-four and be obliged to undergo for four years periods
of training in camp which might extend to a fortnight but might
be no longer than a week. A new provision made them liable to a
light fine only five pounds if they wished to leave the force
before the four years had expired. Moreover, they were en
couraged but not compelled to join the rifle clubs, already very
numerous, whose development the Government assisted by aug
mented grants, to practise shooting in the interval between their
periods of training.
Above all, the new army differed from the old volunteer force
in being organized. In the volunteers there had been above the
battalions only a confused and incoherent grouping into brigades.
Haldane organized his new Territorial Army in fourteen divi
sions,corresponding to the administrative districts created by

Arnold-Forster with two additional Scottish divisions, one for the
Lowlands, the other for the Highlands. It was easy to divide the
Yeomanry into fourteen cavalry brigades. Under the conditions of

enlistment in the Territorials there would be no difficulty in
finding the material of an excellent body of engineers, equal, if
not superior, to the corps attached to the regular army. It would
not be so easy to provide the Territorial Army with die equip
ment and personnel of a good artillery, but the effort must be
made. It must also be provided with a commissariat and a sanitary
at least the skeleton 2 of a real army.
corps, in short must be made
1 H. of
C., 35 February, 1907, Haldane s speech (Parliamentary Debates^ 4th Series, vol.
cbdx, p. 1293).
2
A skeleton organization. . . . You will, I think, have to resort to something of the
179
For this army Haldane wanted a force of three hundred thousand.
If war broke out there could be no doubt that in the patriotic
enthusiasm its declaration would arouse, the figure could be
easily
tripled by the influx of recruits eager to undergo as Territorials a
six months
training. It was even likely that the Government
would introduce conscription. The organization of the Territorial
Army would be ready to receive the conscripts; in case of need,
all the fit
young men of Great Britain. 1
His scheme once adopted, Haldane organized the propaganda

necessary to win recruits for his new army. He made use of the
press. A special department at the War Office supplied the papers
with whatever news favoured his military policy. 2 The
Daily
Mail constituted itself his chief publicity agent and Haldane
publicly thanked that great organ of popular imperialism for
assistance which he had
perhaps himself inspired. He gained the
3
confidence of The Times military correspondent, Colonel

Reping-
ton, who without giving up his post on The Times accepted the
semi-official position of editor of the
Army Review. He also asked
employers to encourage their workmen to enlist. He took advan
4
tage of the industrial crisis which began about the end of 1907 and
lasted over a year to call their attention to the value of the Terri
torial
Army and still more the special reserve as employment for
kind if you are to have behind your striking force the certainty of a power of expansion/
(Ibid,, vol. cliii, p. 678,)
x
R. B. Haldane, address to the London Rifle Brigade, February 10, 1909 The question:
increasingly put to him was: "Why don t you ask Parliament to impose an obligation on
all to serve for home defence?" Hehad sympathy with that question. He thought most
people agree that as for the slacker, who simply amused himself and did nothing, the
country would no doubt show what they thought of him. In all probability he would find
a short and sharp Act of Parliament
passed, if war broke out, compelling him to train him
self, and do it in some inconvenient and
unpleasant part of the country, when he would
not have the prominence of the undoubted
popular esteem which was given to the man
who trained himself as a volunteer for the defence of his native land. General Sir John
French, speech at "West Bromwich, March 22, 1913: He advised all those in favour of
compulsory service to support the Territorial Army because, if ever their views came to
prevail, compulsory service could be brought about with the present force by a mere
stroke of the pen.
2
Amold-Forster, Military Needs and Military Policy, p. 32 n.
8
H. of C., March 7, 1910 (Parliamentary Debates, Commons 1910, 5th Series, vol. xiv,
p. 1162).
4 H. of C., October 21, 1908, Asquith s speech (ibid., 4th Ser., vol. cxciv, p. 1169).
1 80
the men thrown out of work. 1 He met indeed with discomfitures.
For instance, when the historian, Fortescue, whom he had com
missioned to study in the archives of the Foreign Office the mili
tary policy England had followed during her wars with republi
can and imperial France, 2 published a book which concluded with
a panegyric of conscription3 Haldane had recourse to a very un
usual step for which he was severely criticized. He commissioned
an officer of the high command, a member of the Army Council,
General Sir Ian Hamilton, to refute the advocates of conscription
and wrote the preface himself. 4 But his principal method of secur
ing for his system the national support indispensable to its success
was the Statute of 1907 itself and the administrative measures
which accompanied it. It may be briefly described as the establish
ment of the governing classes in the very centre of his new organi
zation, to act as its
mainspring.
The Army, though divided into fourteen large
Territorial
divisions, nevertheless organized on a county basis to appeal

was
to the local patriotism so strong among the English. Forster had
already such a county organization for his terri

contemplated
torial militia Haldane carried
. it out for his Territorial
Army. It is
curious however to notice in what an ambiguous form he presen
ted his plan in 1906. 5 There is*, he declared, one school of thought
which says that what you should do with our old constitutional
forces is to extend them enormously, so that they shall be not
merely7 a support to but an extension of the Regular Army. This

school he added, looks to the Lords-Lieutenant to give a new
,
1
War Office Advertisementfor Recruiting for the Regular Army, October 1908. See Arnold-
Forster*s protests, Morning Post, October 28, 1908, also Military Needs and Military Policy,
p. 120. The Secretary for War

resorted to even more blatant methods of advertisement.
The Lord Mayor s Show on November 9, 1907, included a car filled with Territorials and
Boy Scouts besides regulars.
2
Lord Roberts, Fallacies and Facts, p. 29.
8
The County Lieutenancies and the Army, 1803-1814 p. 290. Fortescue after maintaining
that England could not keep up her army in wartime without recourse to conscription
added: Compulsion cannot be applied for service outside the British Isles.* Lord Roberts,
however, quotes the phrase in a slightly different form and makes it read: Compulsion
cannot in peace be applied for service outside the British Isles* (Fallacies and Facts, p. 30).
Compulsory Service: A Study of the Question in the Light ofExperience, by General Sir Ian
*
Hamilton, With an introduction by the Rt. Hon. R. B. Haldane, Edition I, November

1910; 2nd Edition with notes on the Admiralty view of the risk of invasion, January 1911.
For the book and the circumstances under which it was published see the debates H. of C.,
March 13, 1911, Arthur Balfour s speech; March 14, 1911, Haldane s speech (Parliamentary
Debates, Commons, 1911, 5th Series, vol. xxii, pp. !97>-4i 2073 sqq.).
B
H. of C., July 12, 1906 (ibid., 4th Ser., vol. cbc, pp. 1112, m<5; Army Reform and
other Addresses, p. 85. Cf. H. of C., February 25, 1907 (ibid., vol. cbtix, p. 1304; Army
Reform and oilier Addresses, pp. 124-5).
T8l
life to the Militia. It was the school to which he himself belonged,

and of which indeed he was in many respects the head. But he
least as re at
proceeded immediately to repudiate
its
principles,
gards the functions to be assigned to the Lords-Lieutenant. The

Lords-Lieutenant ,
he stated, cannot discharge that function. For
such a purpose they are as dead as the dodo. This reassured the
Radicals and Labour members. Haldane clearly did not contem
at the head of his new
plate placing the old county aristocracy
But the declaration had no sooner been uttered, when,
army.
without any transition, the speech of the Secretary for War once
more took an unexpected turn. He expressed his conviction that
those whom he had a moment before treated as fossils could be
and military functions entrusted to the Lords-Lieu
resuscitated
tenant provided they were surrounded by a more democratic
framework. Actually the first five clauses of the Act of 1907 set
up in every county a county association which should contain
representatives
of the County Councils and secretaries of trade
unions and were to offer the presidency to the Lord-
empowered
Lieutenant. In fact, they always did offer it and the Lord-Lieuten
ant always accepted.
The scheme aroused some protests from the Radical and
Labour benches. Sir Charles Dilke gave it an ironical welcome
and refused to regard it as
anything but a masterpiece of organized
1
snobbery. Ramsay MacDonald
said it reminded him of a new
edition of Disraeli s novels. 2 Was it
befitting secretaries of trade
unions to become, by joining these associations, recruiters for the
army under, the patronage of the aristocracy? Conservatives also
1
H. of C., July 12, 1906, Sir Charles Dilke s speech: Lords-Lieutenant did not com
mand implicit obedience on the other side of the House, and on his side they commanded
none at all. The suggestion that it was necessary to have their patronage brought to his
mind Miss Barrett Browning s
description in Aurora Leigh of how upon some occasions
Lords-Lieutenant cast down on those who lived in a lower sphere a kind of beaming
influence which crushed out the tendency to vulgarity. (Everything following the words
none at all has been suppressed in the official report. Parliamentary Debates, 4th Series,
vol. cix t p. 1136.)
2
H. of C, April 23, 1907,}. R. MacDonald s speech: the county associations
. . . . . .
would change the political and social centre of gravity in the country, and when in work
ing order they would form a new nucleus of political and social influence. The right
honourable gentleman seemed to have faced this modern problem with mediaeval ideas in
his mind. Modern developments must be based on modern means and the military scheme ;
of the right honourable gentleman must have an industrial basis and not a basis which
assumed the existence of the relations between the village and the hall. The plan of . . .
county associations indeed was like an introduction or footnote to Beaconsfield s novels.

The jesting allusion to Lord Beaconsfield s novels has been omitted from the official report
(Parliamentary Debates, 4th Series, vol. clxxii, p. 1592).
182
expressed apprehension. Surrounded as they would be by nou-
veaux riches to whom the old traditions of the gentry meant
nothing, would it be wise of the Lords-Lieutenant to undertake
functions which perhaps they might find themselves unable to
1
fulfil honourably? Nevertheless, his
plan was adopted, and was
more aristocratic in its final than in its original form: the County
Councillors in the county associations were not the elected repre
sentativesof the County Councils but nominees of the Army
Council. Nevertheless it proved a success. Throughout the coun
try the associations were formed, flourished and even combined
2
to form a vast national federation with its semi-official organ.
For more than half a century the landed gentry had been progres
sively dispossessed of local government and the Radical victory
at the polls in 1906 had seemed likely to accelerate the process.
Now however at one point Haldane s initiative had not merely
slackened but reversed it. The landed gentry were invested with
new functions of military local government.
When he instituted the County Associations and placed the
Lords-Lieutenant at their head it was Haldane s intention to make
use of the moral influence exercised by the landowners to attract
into the Territorial Army and keep in it as many recruits as pos
sible. How would these recruits, drawn from the lower classes,
be provided with the officers they required? To provide officers
for the reserve England had not at her disposal the sources of
supply possessed by countries with a conscript army. It was to the

upper middle class that she must look for volunteers to officer her
territorial army. Why not appeal to the patriotism or, as Haldane
3
dared to call it, the militarism of the public schools? For many
,
1
William le Queux, The Invasion ofLondon, 1906, Preface, p. xi: Under our twentieth-
century social system, which has unfortunately displaced so many influencial and respected
county families everyone of which had military or naval members, relations or ancestors
by wealthy tradesmen, speculators and the like, any efficient county association will be
very hard to create. Mr. Haldane s scheme is a bold and masterly sketch, but he will find
it very hard to fill in the details satisfactorily. So far as the Lords-Lieutenant are concerned,
this social transformation had not yet been effected when Haldane prepared his Bill. After
1906 the Liberals began to make nominations calculated to change rapidly their social
origins. (Lord Shutdeworth in Lancashire, Major-General
H. F. Brocklehurst in Rutland,
Sir William Brompton Gordon in Suffolk, Colonel Henry Cubitt in Surrey, Lord Nun-
burnholme in the East Riding of Yorkshire, Sir Hugh Bell in the North Riding.) But
such nominations were still few, and since both parties had until 1906 respected the old
traditions, on the eve of the Great War, members of old families were still at the head of
almost all the counties.
* the National Defence Association, number,
National Defence, the Organ of first
November 1908.
8 H. of C., February 25, 1907, Haldane s speech: . . . We saw that there was only one
183
years games had been compulsory in these schools, and this not
only because the masters wished to improve the boys physique,
but to foster that team spirit which in children is the germ of
public spirit.
But did public spirit thus understood differ very
much from the military spirit? 1 Certain imperialists had appealed
to these compulsory games as a proof that England was not so
hostile to conscription as was commonly stated and believed. 2
Before imposing conscription on adults, they asked, why not at
least introduce into the schools compulsory military training? Or
source from which we could hope to get young men of the upper middle class, who are
the usual source from which this element isdrawn, and that was the Universities and the
big public schools, like Eton and Harrow, and other public schools of that character, which
at present have
large cadet corps. You are not in danger of increasing the spirit of mili
tarism there because the spirit of militarism already runs fairly high both there and at the
Universities* (Parliamentary Debates, 4th Series, vol. clxix, p. 1321). It would seem that
Sir Edward Grey speaking six weeks later in defence of the Bill wished to undo the effect
produced by this gratuitously provocative language. He was at pains to dissipate the
apprehensions that the scheme may create too much of a military spirit in the country . . .
I do not believe it will ... I would much rather use the

phrase "public spirit" than "mili
tary spirit* (H. of C, April 9, 1907; ibid., vol. clxxii, p. 108).
1
H. of C., July 12, 1906, Haldane s speech: .The people of this country will not be
dragooned into giving military service. Lord Cardwell used to say that, so far from being
a nation of shopkeepers, the British were the most fighting nation on earth. I think that the
interest of our people in military matters is probably more profound, more real and spon
taneous than that of any other nation in the world. The keenness and the willingness of our
people to give up time to volunteering and to the study of military organization is one of
the striking features we have to deal with* (Parliamentary Debates, 4th Series, vol. clx,
p. 1082).
a
Rudyard Kipling s letter to The Times, December II, 1903: *What someone
ought
to point out now is that there exists in the average English public school a highly efficient
system of conscription (for games) based: i. On physical coercion of the young conscript.
2. On carefully educated public opinion of the conscripts* equals. Under this system the
conscript is compelled between the ages of twelve and seventeen to put in some 2,500
hours of drill. If he comes up at ten and stays till he is eighteen, the total is nearer 4,000
hours. ... By the time he is fourteen or sixteen the conscript under this system is set and
keen; and if he isn t keen he is at any rate moderately efficient. Of course, this system could
not be applied to the youth of all England without raising a horrible outcry. But we find
it
actually and smoothly at work in a minute section of the community, and it turns out
annually, let us say, between seven and ten thousand boys trained to its standard.* He
continues, Now, suppose that even 10 per cent, of the hours devoted to cricket and footer
drills could be taken up for military drill and target work, wouldn t it be for
gain? It
couldn t come to much more than an hour and a half a week for thirty-six weeks, but in
five or six years that would go far towards making a trained man* (National Service
Journal , January 1904). Ten

years later Kipling s suggestion was taken up by Lord Wil-
loughby de Broke, who introduced
a Territorial Force (Amendment) Bill which must be
noticed, if only as a curiosity. It proposed to render national service compulsory for boys
attending public schools; in other words, make conscription the privilege of young
men of the upper classes (H. of L., March 12, 1914; Parl Deb., 5th Ser., Lords
1914, vol. xv, pp. 461 sqq.).On this point we may remark an agreement
queer enough in
allconscience between the views of Conservatives like Willoughby de Broke and those of
the Labour party. Haldane had at first intended to organize military
training in elementary
as well as in secondary schools. It was due to
pressure from die Labour members that he
abandoned the former part of his scheme (H. of C., June 19, 1907, A. Henderson s speech,
ibid., 4th Ser., vol. dxxvi, p. 532).
184
without going so far, why not encourage the development of
voluntary associations already in existence for the military training
of children and youths? We are not alluding to the Boy Scouts, a
flourishing institution, which certainly tended to instil into chil
dren habits of military discipline but whose character was ambi
guous and which denied that it was inspired by a military spirit
in the strict sense of the term. 1 Nor do we refer to the Boys Bri
gades founded by philanthropists for boys of the lower classes to

train private soldiers, regular or territorial, rather than officers. 2
We are thinking of those cadet corps which came into existence
for the first time in 1859 and 1860, a product of that violent explo
sion of gallophobia to which the modern volunteer movement
owed its birth. Why should not the War Office give official recog
nition to these bodies, or at any rate to some of them? The idea
had been considered before Haldane s arrival at the War Office
but it would seem had been opposed by the departments and the
professional soldiers. He took it up again and made a success of it.
He formed an Officers Training Corps for the public schools and
Universities. 3 To every school and University a contingent of
cadets was attached of a definite size which would be regularly
affiliated to the Territorial force of the county and for which the
War Office would provide, in addition to a fixed payment of five
pounds per company, the necessary arms, ammunition, and in
structors. The experiment succeeded. There were schools, Eton
for example, which provided such a number of cadets that they
assumed the appearance of preparatory schools for Sandhurst,
nurseries of professional officers. And everywhere young amateur
sprang up, ready to serve as regular officers, if the country

officers
were ever in danger. It is not easy in relating the moral history of
a nation to estimate the strength of successive currents of ideas.
There can be no doubt that after the end of the Boer War a very
pronounced movement of anti-militarism arose in England. But
We should notice the institution by the education committees of classes for Boy
1
Scouts in the elementary schools of certain counties, Lancashire first, then Surrey, then
Kent (Times Educational Supplement, June 4, July 2, 1912).
2
For certain attempts made before 1906 to attach the Boys Brigades to the regular
army by granting special privileges to members of a Brigade who enlisted see Arnold-
Forster, The Army in 1906, 1906, pp. 157-8.
8
See The Special Army Order of March 16, 1908, which put into execution the recom
mendation of a Committee of which Sir Edward Ward was chairman. The clause of the
Act of 1907 which authorized Government grants to the cadet corps had been vigorously
opposed by the Labour members. To satisfy them it had been necessary to provide that
only boys above sixteen could benefit by a grant.
185
we must not forget that, on the one hand, the number of volun
teers, continued under a new form as the Territorials, remained
than it had ever been before that war, and that, on the
higher
other hand, the youth of the middle class displayed a knowledge of
things military and a taste for them which had not been witnessed
before. May not we conclude that pacifist opinion, though often
more vocal, was also more superficial, and that the militarization
of the nation and particularly of the governing classes,1 if more
silent, was more profound?
10
We are a first-class Power, and we are apparently looking out

for a first-class war. The Cardwell system was inaugurated at a
time when our chief military problem was India. That is no
longer the. case. It is now in Europe/ These words were spoken
in January 1909 by an English general in the course of a debate on
the future of the army opened by Lieutenant-Colonel Repington. 2
In Europe more precisely in Western Europe on the frontier
which divided Germany from France and Belgium. But nothing
had been achieved if the Government were content to maintain
its
expeditionary force in England in a state of preparation with
out taking the necessary measures for its embarkation, the pro
tection of its transports, its disembarkation, and immediate con
centration at particular points arranged beforehand with the army
of a prospective ally. Haldane had scarcely reached the War Office
when he took the necessary steps. 3
1
See Haldane s remarks to Sir Almeric Fitzroy, March 14, 1910; As for his work at the
War Office, he looks upon it as complete, and would be glad to hand the system he has
created over to the Opposition, which, he believes, in combination with the County
Associations, would at this stage do more to develop the Territorial organization than
it is in his power to do. He spoke with great gratitude of the assistance he had received
from his political foes, and regretted that it was not possible to do more State business by
co-operation between the two parries (Memoirs of Sir Almeric Fitzroy, vol. i, p. 395). A
month George Wyndham in a conversation with Wilfrid Blunt used language
earlier
which justified Haldane s comments: The strength of the Tory position is that they and
the King together command the whole material force of the country, besides half its voting
strength. They have the money and the Army and the Navy and the Territorials, all down
to the Boy Scouts (Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, My Diaries, February 5, 1910, vol. ii, p. 299),
*
Aldershot Military Society: The Future of Army Organization, by Lieut.-Col. C. A Court
Repington, January 27, 1909, p. 27.
vol. iii, pp. 170 sqq. Lieut.-Col. A Court Repington, The First
3
British Documents . . .
World War, 1920, vol. i, pp. 2 scjq.; D. S. MacDiarmid, Life of Lieutenant-General Sir
James Moncrieff Grierson, 1923, pp. 213-29; Gfineiral Huguet, U
Intervention militaire
186
It that the Anglo-French agreement of 1904 had
would seem
hardly been concluded when the Committee of Imperial Defence
studied the possibility of co-operation by the British army with a
French army on the Continent. However guarded in form Lord
Lansdowne s overtures to the French Government in April and
May 1905, at the time of the Tangier crisis, undoubtedly the
French statesmen interpreted them as opening the door to a mili
tary understanding between the two nations and it was for
that
reason that they aroused at Paris the panic of which we have
spoken already. It is probable also that Admiral Fisher discussed
the question during the following months with some Frenchman
in high position. The project of an armed landing on the coast of
Hanover under the protection of the British fleet, whose -revela
tion in the Matin created such a stir, presumably originated with
him. And finally it is probable that Lieutenant-Colonel Reping-
ton, a staff officer who on retiring from the army had become
military correspondent of The Times, was an unofficial agent be
tween the military authorities of the two countries during the
concluding months of Unionist Government. But it was not until
December after the fall of the Unionist Cabinet, when the Ger
man Government, possibly encouraged by the political crisis in
England following as it did the revolution in Russia, seemed to
be adopting a decidedly bellicose attitude that a rapprochement
between the two armies was effected, outside the Cabinet to begin
with. Commandant Huguet,
the French military attach^, hap
pened meet General

to Grierson, the director of military opera
tions, who informed him in confidence that the War Office was
studying the measures which must be taken to despatch rapidly to

the Continent an expeditionary force of more than a hundred
thousand men. A few days later, Huguet repeated what he had
heard to the journalist Repington, while expressing his fear that
the new Cabinet might be less favourable to French interests than
predecessor. Repington questioned Grey on
its this point by letter
and obtained a sufficiently reassuring answer to take it on himself

in concert with two important members of the Imperial Defence
Committee to open unofficial communications with Rouvier s
britannique en i914, 1928, pp. 13 sqq.; Viscount Grey of Fallodon, Twenty-five Years,
1892-
An
i916, vol. i, pp. 71 sqq.; Viscount Haldane, Before the War> 1920, pp. 28 sqq.; Auto
biography, 1929, pp. 189 sqq. ; J. A. Spender, The Life of the Right Hon. Sir Henry Campbell-
Bannerman, 1923, vol. i, pp. 248 sqq.; Lucien Wolf, Life of the First Marquess ofîpon, 1921,
vol. ii, pp. 292-3.
187
Cabinet through the intermediary of Huguet. Rouvier, who had
been terrified the previous spring by the offer of military assist
ance, now asked for it. Paul Cambon, who was on leave, was sent
to London. On January 10 he asked Grey what would be the
attitude of the British Government in the event of a war between
France and Germany. Grey replied that he was not in a position
to pledge the country to more than neutrality a benevolent
neutrality, if such a thing existed. Would Grey at least authorize

unofficial conversations between the military and naval com
mands in readiness for an eventual alliance between the two
Governments? He did not refuse, and if Cambon concluded that
he did not disapprove of the suggestion, it was only because he
put a favourable interpretation upon his silence.
The electoral campaign was in full swing and Grey passed half
the week in his constituency. The Government did not yet know
how large its majority would be, or even if it would secure a clear
It was
majority. presenting itself to the electorate with a pro
gramme of peace. For such a government the signature of a mili
tary convention with France would be a strange beginning. On
the other hand, if unfortunately Germany declared war on
France and England remained neutral, what an outburst of French
wrath it would mean against la perfide Albion, what a triumph for
German policy Grey did not know how to answer Cambon s
!
request which he believed to come from Paris, whereas it origi

nated ultimately with certain British officers and members of the
Committee of Imperial Defence. After a public meeting in his
constituency he took the opportunity to discuss the matter with
Haldane, an imperialist like himself, and they agreed upon the
reply to make to Cambon. Conversations between the general
staffs would be authorized on the clear understanding that they
would remain strictly technical and not commit the two Govern
ments. The Prime Minister, who was in Scotland, and with whom
Sir Edward Grey was
obliged to correspond by post, showed little
enthusiasm for the solution. It comes he wrote to Lord Ripon,
,
Very close to an honourable undertaking. I do not like the stress

laid upon joint
preparations/ Nevertheless, he gave way. The
elections were over and on January 31 Grey, fortified by the con
sent of the Premier and without taking the trouble to obtain tta
approval of the entire Cabinet, made known his acceptance

hedged round with elaborate restrictions, of Cambon s proposal
188
Conversations, equally unofficial, were begun with the approval
of the Foreign Office between the War Office and the Belgian
War For a German violation of Belgian neutrality was
Office.
1
already expected to be the first act of a war perhaps imminent.
Thus on the very morrow of the advent of the Liberal Govern
ment the system of relations took shape between England and
France which would continue until 1914. There was no treaty or
alliance between the two Governments. Nor was there any mili
tary convention. But there was an entente which amounted, or

almost amounted, to an alliance between Downing Street and the
Quai d Orsay, and an understanding between the War Offices of
London and Paris of a more detailed character than many military
conventions.
ii
To scheme of preparation for war required

realize this vast
plenty of guile, but it was a

quality of which Haldane had no lack.
The organization of an expeditionary force whose destination was
obvious to anyone who took the trouble to reflect, was calculated
to alarm the pacifists in the Cabinet and the party. But it was
accompanied by a number of measures, reductions of certain

1
See in The Times ofJanuary 23 the article entitled The Low Countries . It is, however,
interesting to notice how fluctuatingwas the language of speakers in Parliament, at the
very time when under Haldane s patronage co-operation between the three general staffs
of England, France, and Belgium was being arranged. When on March 8, 1906, Haldane,
had explained for the first time in the Commons his plans for army reorganization, Arnold-
Forster intervened to declare that the reserve was completely incapable of conducting on
the Continent the war he obviously foresaw. Were we to fight for the neutrality of Bel
gium, if that should be our fate, outside these islands and take with us these bands of
irregular troops? (Parliamentary Debates, 4th Series, vol. cHii, p. 690). Immediately,
a
Liberal member protested: He hopecl that it would never be suggested in this House, as
us
it was sometimes
suggested outside, that the friendly relations with France rendered
liable, if hostilities broke out between that Power and any other, to take any part in the
operations which might ensue (H. of C., March 8, 1906: ibid., vol. cliii, p. 745). And
some months later BaBbur s language was calculated to banish the supposition, envisaged by
Forster and rejected by Guest, and recall the attention of the British public to India: "The
right hon. gentleman talked as if there was to be an expedition beyond the sea in which
154,000 men were to be straightaway embarked and transported off to some distant theatre
of operations. The contingency requiring such an expedition might occur, but it is not
very easy to imagine that it would. . We might be asked to land 150,000 men on the
. .
coast of Europe, but I do not know that I should sacrifice much money or take enormous
pains so to organize my force that that could be done straightaway and immediately.
What is required, so far as I am able to see, is the power of sending continuous reinforce
ments off to India in a great emergency. That does not mean sending 150,000 men straight
off in a few weeks to Bombay (H. of C., July 12, 1906, Parliamentary Debates, 4th Series,
vol. clx, pp. 1161-2).
categories of troops, and financial economies which aroused loud

protests from the speakers and journalists of the Opposition and
thus distracted the attention of the advanced Liberals- To the advo
cates of conscription on the one hand Haldane contrived to pre
sent his new Territorial Army as the utmost advance on the road
to the organization of the nation in arms to which the Parlia
ment and country could be induced to consent. Therefore, though
in 1906 they had given Haldane s policy an unfavourable
recep
tion, they became reconciled to it the moment it appeared in its
true light, a policy not of excessive economies but of an indefinite
development of the reserve forces under the patronage of the old

aristocracy. In the words of Lord Roberts, who, however, did not
discontinue his zealous campaign on behalf of compulsory mili
tary service, it was greatest step forward in the direction of a

"the
great national army that had ever been made officially 1 To sin .
cere Liberals, radical pacifists, and representatives of the working

class on the other hand Haldane
presented his system as an insur
mountable barrier against conscription and the members of Parlia
ment who from that quarter spoke and voted against the Bill
were half-hearted in their opposition. After all, it was a force of
volunteers. The individual was free to enlist or refuse to enlist.
When we read the debates in the House of Commons on the army
estimates during these years we receive the impression that the
only questions which really interested the Labour members were

whether the wages of the men employed in the national work
shops would be raised, or whether on the plea of economy the
number of men employed at Woolwich would be reduced.
Assured of the neutrality of the working class and the co-opera
tion of the Conservative sections of the nation Haldane lost no
time in carrying out his plan. On April 1, 1908, the statute was to
come into operation as regards the Territorial Army. Six months
earlier the King had received in
public audience the Lords-
Lieutenant of Great Britain, had expressed his satisfaction that
duties they had once performed had. oeen restored to them, and
his conviction that
they would fulfil their new responsibilities
to
the general satisfaction. A slump in industry favoured the recruit
ing of the regular army which had become the accepted refuge of
the unemployed. A wave of indignation against Germany swept
crowds of young men into the ranks of the Territorials. By the
1
Speech at Birmingham, April 4, 1907.
end of 1908 their number had reached 188,000 officers and men
The following summer, the King reviewed at Windsor after
distributing their colours detachments from 108 units from every
district in the country, industrial as well as
agricultural. all the Of
English counties Lancashire had given the best response to Hal-
dane s appeal and in July 1909 King Edward presented its colours
to the West Lancashire division which consisted of 16,000 men.
At the beginning of 1910 the number of territorials had reached
the figure of 276,000, nine-tenths of the maximum for which
Haldane asked. Two years had then passed since Sir Henry
Campbell-Bannerman s death, but by the beginning of 1908 Sir
Henry s eyes had been opened to the truth that when he sent
Haldane to the War Office it was not Haldane who had fallen
into a trap. He had proved a most active and successful Secretary
for War, indeed the only Secretary for War worthy of the name
which England had possessed since Cardwell.
About the end of 1906 the rumour spread in Germany of the
intimate discussions which had taken place between the English
and French staffs. In the Senate Clemenceau replied to these
rumours by a declaration whose form was so strange that it might
well seem an avowal. 1 But not a single member of the House of
Commons attempted to extract from the Government a denial or
admission. Haldane and, after him, Campbell-Bannerman, re
assured Metternich by stating categorically -which was true in
the letter, if not in the spirit that no military convention between
2
England and France was in existence. The German Government
would appear to have accepted these declarations. Why was it
satisfied so easily? Was it the presence at the War Office of Hal-
1
*Ho w could I answer yes or no ? ... I have only been President of the Council for
three weeks and ... I have never heard anything of any document of the nature of that
Anglo-French military convention you speak of. There are questions so framed that it is
the first duty of a Government with any sense of responsibility to refuse to answer them
(Senate, November 20, 1906). The British Press without distinction of parties seemed to
have received orders to say as little as possible of what the Daily News of the 2ist calls a
curious expression and the Morning Post of the 22nd C16menceau*s curiously lame*
declaration.
2
Count von Metternich to the Minister for Foreign Affairs, February 17, 1907 (Die
Grosse Potitik . vol. xxii1 , p. 125). This was the formula which Government speakers
. .
regularly used until the Great War. It may be thought however that Haldane exceeded
the limits of permissible equivocation when speaking in the House of Lords on May
15,
1912, he stated that the friendship* between England and France had nothing to do with
military questions, and repeated once more two years before the war the well-worn assur
ance which would have been true in 1900 that die object of the expeditionary force was
not to fight near home on the Continent but to defend the distant possessions of the Em
pire (Parliamentary Debates, Lords, 1912, 5th Series, vol. xi p pp. 1037-8).
191
c
dane, a warm
our only true friend 2 that calmed Ger
friend ,
1
,
man apprehensions? Up to a point yes; but the German attitude,

and it is essential to understand this, was primarily determined by
the fact that, if these disquieting rumours alarmed the diploma
tists, they did not disturb the military experts. Bismarck was
reported to have said that if a British army landed on the Conti

nent he would send the police to arrest it. 3 And in the interval the
Boer War had done nothing to restore the prestige of the British
soldier in Germany. The German ambassador in Washington,
reporting to Billow a conversation he had just had with Roose

velt, represented the President as dismayed by his inability to dis
cipline the American troops they desert sooner than obey .

Typically Anglo-Saxon/ was the Emperor s marginal comment,
things are just the same in. England/

4
doubt the German No
officers were convinced, like Lord Roberts, that without con
scription die English could not think of challenging the German

army, and equally convinced and history down to 1914 would
prove them right that the English would turn a deaf ear to
Lord Roberts s appeals.
1
Count Metternich to Prince von Blilow, May 4, 1906 have a warm friend in : . . . We
the English Minister for War, Mr. Haldane. He wrote to me a short while ago in a private
letter what he has since repeated in conversation hope the time has now come to estab : "I
lish the very best relations between our two countries. You know attachment to my
yours.* William II wrote on the margin: I don t believe it* (Die Grosse Politik vol. . . .
11
xxi , p. 426).
2
Anonymous letter from London, February 15, 1907: . . . In fact ... the mass of the
population here wants war. The only true friend Germany possesses here and who is
. . .
an outspoken opponent of war Mr. Haldane cannot swim, alone against the stream*
(Die Grosse Politik vol. xxi 11 p. 487).
. . .
,
3
Sir Ian Hamilton, Compulsory Service, p. 95.
*
Baron Speck von Sternberg to Prince von Blilow, September 9, 1907 (Die Grosse
Politik vol. xxvi, p. 73). Cf.
. . . A
report on the Territorial Army by (the) Captain (of a
corvette) Seebolm, May 12, 1910: *. The young men lack the training given by com
, .
pulsory service. The Territorial Army is a joke. When the men should have gone into
camp, they struck and went home (Tirpitz, Politische Dokumente, vol. i, p. 176). For the
regular army see a report by the military attache, Von Winterfeldt, who believed in the
genuine existence of an agreement between the two staffs, written on February 7, 1911:
On the question whether and when they would actually undertake this expedition across
the Channel they have presumably not committed themselves. At present two important
considerations militate against such a daring step on the part of the British army. In the
first place their expeditionary force is still far behind other armies in its military training.
This very year the English manoeuvres produced an unfavourable impression upon my
colleagues. The
the handling of the troops, the staff arrangements, all betrayed
tactics,
an astonishing and the planning and execution of the manoeuvres were wholly
inefficiency,
inadequate to modern requirements (Die Grosse Politik . . vol. xxix, p. 66 n). the . On
other hand one must not forget the opinion of General von Falkenhayn who opposed his
compatriots prejudice. *We must not underestimate the British army: it is an army of
subalterns (Conrad von Hotzendorf, Aus Meiner Dienstzeit, vol. v, p. 819). Falkenhayn
said this, it is true, on December 19, 1914, five months after the beginning of the war.
192
Were the Germans then not afraid of the martial power of
Great Britain? And did the refusal of the English to listen to Lord
Roberts prove that they did not take the German peril seriously?
No. But on both sides the issue was not regarded as a military one.
The English permitted their general staff to contemplate in readi
ness for all eventualities the
despatch of an army to the Continent,
but they cherished the hope that it would never come to this. In a
moment of panic they might swell the enlistment of their Terri
torial Army to provide against the
danger of. a German invasion,
as if that had been Haldane s intention in
forming it. But the navy
would ensure their safety, if only the
necessary money were spent
upon and not wasted on a useless army, and whenever on a
it
technical question of this kind an Englishman listened to a debate

between a soldier and a sailor, he instinctively supported the
latter. Once the first enthusiasm had ebbed, the numbers of the
Territorial Army decreased every year, and the special reserve
yielded disappointing
1
We
are thus led to study the essen
results.
tial
problem, which was naval not military. If for some years
England had been morally at war with Germany, the cause must
not be sought in the War Offices of the two nations, nor yet,
where many are inclined to look for it, in the intrigues of diplo
matists. It must be sought in their admiralties and naval com
mand. The true architects of the new balance of power at sea, and
in consequence of the breach between England and Germany and
the Triple Entente against the latter, were Tirpitz, Pelletan, and
Togo.
Ill FISHER AND NAVY REORGANIZATION
The year 1905, though it witnessed the substitution of a Liberal

for a Unionist Cabinet, marked no cleavage in the history of
British naval policy. 2 In the early years of the new century it was
1
Duke of Bedford, The Collapse of the Special Infantry Reserve* (Nineteenth Century
January 1913, vol. borii, p. 199).
2
For the history of the British navy during the years we are studying two excellent year
books are available: (i) The Naval Annual, 1886 (and onwards) edited by Lord Brassey
(afterwards by Lord Hythe). Besides chapters giving the comparative statistics for all the
navies of the world it contains a number of special studies of particular problems relating to
193
determined by two factors. The first was the construction of a
powerful German navy. This dated from the law of 1898, but
more particularly from the law of 1900. The second was the
violent reaction which followed in England at the conclusion of
the Boer War, against an imperialist policy and the swollen navy
and army estimates it had involved. Both these factors began to
operate before the fall of the Unionists and both influenced the
naval policy of the Unionist Government during its closing years.
From now onwards, the Admiralty s new policy is embodied in a
single individual, namely SirJohn Fisher, to whom we dannot deny
genius of a sort, even when we have read his strange memoirs.
1
Born in Ceylon in 1841 of a family of soldiers his enemies said

he was not a genuine Englishman and that Asiatic blood flowed in
his veins and therefore already in his sixtieth year when the new
century opened, he had behind him a long and brilliant career.
After taking part in the Crimean War as a cadet, and in the
Chinese campaign of 1869 as a midshipman, he had been respon
sible during the seventies for the establishment of a separate school
of torpedo gunnery, at the head of which he was placed. In com
mand for the first time of a man-of-war he had taken an impor
tant part in the bombardment of Alexandria and when placed at
the head of the landing force his invention of the armoured train
attracted the attention of the press and the public. On his return
from Egypt, severely invalided, his work for years lay on dry
land. But he continued to rise. He became Director of Ordnance
and Torpedoes and Admiral Superintendent of Portsmouth Dock-
the navy, thework of British, and sometimes of foreign, experts, (2) The Navy League
Annual founded and edited by Allan H. Burgoyne, 1907 onwards, follows similar lines.
For a comparison between the British and foreign navies see further the official document
published annually since 1896, entitled Fleets (Great Britain and Foreign Countries) Return to
an Order of the Honourable the House of Commonsfor Return showing the Fleets of Great Britain,
France, Russia, Germany, Italy, United States of America and Japan, distinguishing Battleships
built and building; Cruisers built and building; Coast Defence . . . Vessels built and building;
Torpedo Vessels; Torpedo Boat Destroyers and Torpedo Boats, built and building. Return to show
Date of Launch, Displacement and Armaments reduced to one Common Scale. Volume ii of Fred
T. Jane s The British Battle Fleet, its inception and growth throughout the Centuries to the Present
Day is easy to consult and well documented especially as regards die material of the fleet.
See further: England in deutscher Beleuchtung, Einzelabhandlungen herausgegeban von B.
Thomas Lenschav, Berlin 5. Heft, und Graf. E. Rcventlow Die englische Seemacht, 1906, For
the period immediately preceding that with which we are dealing see Sir William Laird
Clowes, The Royal Navy: A History from the earliest Times to the Death of Queen Victoria,
1897-1901, vol. vii, 1903. H. W. Wilson, Ironclads in Action: A
Sketch of Naval Warfare
from 1855 to 1895 with some account of the development of the Battleship in England, with an
introduction by Captain A. T. Mahan, 2 vols., 1st Edition, 1896, 5th Edition, 1897.
1
Memories 1919; Records 1919. See further, for Lord Fisher s life and policy, Admiral
Sir R. H. Bacon, The Life ofLordSisher ofKilverstone, 2 vols., 1929.
194
FISHER AND NAVY REORGANIZATION
yard. In 1892 he was made one of the Naval or Sea Lords, the
four official expert advisers to the First Lord of the Admiralty, the
Minister responsible to Parliament. He was the Third Naval Lord,
naval construction was his province, and he won further laurels.
He then returned to sea and took command first of the British
North American station, then after representing the Admiralty at
the firstHague Conference where we have already seen the
spirit
which inspired his attitude he was placed in command of
the Mediterranean fleet. His fame steadily grew, the achievement,
in part of the demonic zeal he displayed in the performance of his
duties, in part of the skill with which he contrived to create a body
of supporters among the sailors. In the Mediterranean he arbitrarily
formed a committee of those captains and commanders of his
squadron whom he considered more intelligent than the others
and readier to welcome innovations, giving them regular instruc
tion in strategy, tactics, and seamanship and in turn asking them
for the advice their experience could give. He thus made himself
very unpopular with those excluded from this circle of confidants

but won a corresponding devotion from the small number of the
chosen, applying unflinchingly the maxim that favouritism is
7
the essence of successful command . Further he invited journalists
to his table and for years had counted among his intimate friends
publicists of such world-wide repute as W. T. Stead1 and Arnold
White. At the head of his circle of friends was no less a personage
than King Edward, whose confidence he had contrived to gain
and whom he amused by his extraordinary conversation,smok ing-
room stories interlarded with texts from the Bible, and from
whom he secured the position of first naval aide-de-camp de ,
spite the King s occasional alarm at Fisher

s indiscreet advertise
ment of the very genuine friendship which united them.

While in command of the Mediterranean fleet he received a
visit from Lord Selborne, the First Lord of the Admiralty, who
falling a victim to his spell made him an Admiral and Second

Sea Lord, a position which enabled him to dispose of the person
nel of the navy. Then, after a brief interval during which he was
Commander-in-Chief at Portsmouth and, as we have already
seen, assisted Lord Esher and Sir George Clarke to work out their
It was Fisher who had inspired W. T. Stead s campaign in the Pall Mall Gazette which
1
led to the introduction by the Government and the enactment of the Navy Defence Act
of 1889 (Fred T.Jane, The British Battle Fleet, vol. ii, p. 61 .).
195
scheme for reorganizing the War Office on the model of the
Admiralty, he became First Sea Lord towards the end of 1904 on
the anniversary, as his admirers liked to point out, of the Battle of
Trafalgar. For seven years if we reckon from his appointment,
already a very important one, as Second Sea Lord, or five, if we
reckon from November 1904, under three successive Prime Minis
ters, one Unionist and two Liberal he was in fact the dictator of
the Admiralty. By the new division of powers which he effected
between the four naval members of the Board of Admiralty, by
his dominating personality, and by cleverly organized advertise
ment, he secured a supremacy over this three colleagues which

was alien to the traditions of the Admiralty and resembled the
supremacy exercised at the War Office by the Commander-in-
Chief, until on the advice of Fisher himself and because of the
1
dangers that supremacy involved, the post had been abolished.
1
Lord Sydenham, My Working Life, p. 207. H. of C, March <5, 1905, Sir John Colomb s
speech (Parliamentary Debates, 4th Series, vol. cxlii, p. 478 sqq.) the speaker calls for the
:
publication of the Order in Council supposed to have altered the division of powers at the
Board of Admiralty. When on the following day, March 7, Gibson Bowles hinted that
the reason why Lord Selbourne had left the Admiralty to become Governor of South
Africa was that he could no longer tolerate Fisher s dictatorship (Parliamentary Debates,
4th Series, vol. cxlii, p. 609) Lord Selborne published the document (Board of Admiralty , . .
Copy of Orders in Council, dated 10th of August 1904, showing designation of the various mem
bers of, and Secretaries to the Board of Admiralty and the business assigned to them, 1905), and
speaking in the House of Lords on the 2ist undertook to prove, supporting his contention
with ample evidence, that the Order in Council was not calculated to increase the authority
of the First Sea Lord. Actually, the discipline of the navy and the promotion of officers
below the rank of Commander were removed from his jurisdiction. His functions were
restricted to examining special questions of naval policy. As to the final note which de
clared that in any matter of great importance the First Sea Lord is always to be consulted
by the other Sea Lords, the Civil Lord and the Parliamentary or Permanent Secretary*
and that it was the prerogative of the First Sea Lord to lay the matter before the First Lord
of the Admiralty, Lord Selborne maintained that it did no more than put into writing the
accepted practice of the Board. He denied that it amounted to a declaration that the First
\
Lord had no right to submit question to the Board without the approval of the First
Sea Lord. The first argument is plausible but Lord Selborne omitted to state that the Order
in Council gave the First Sea Lord authority to make decisions concerning the fighting
and sea-going efficiency of the Fleet* which gave him an extraordinarily strict control over
the Third Sea Lord, who had charge of the material of the navy. The second argument is
also plausible. But on the one hand, to transform a custom into a written rule was certainly
to give it new weight, a dangerous step, if it were not intended to increase the functions
of die First Sea Lord, at a moment when the position was held by a man of such powerful
personality as Admiral Fisher. And is it so certain that when Lord Selborne denied that it
had been his intention when he signed the note to deprive the First Lord of all power or
initiative, he was not protesting against the interpretation Fisher actually gave to the Order
in Council of August 10, 1904? (Lord Tweedmouth, H. of C., July 4, 1907 (Parl Deb.,
4th Ser., vol. clxxvii, p. 834). A. Lawrence Lowell (The Government of England, vol.
i,pp. 92-3), though writing three years after the Order in Council of August 10, 1904,
describes the respective functions of the four Naval Lords ; he does not employ the new
terminology Sea Lords as though they were still defined by the Orders in Council of
,
1872 and 1882.
196
The statements of principle which appeared over the signature of
the responsible ministers had been presented to them by Fisher
and drawn up previously under his direct supervision. He made
himself chairman of the Commissions whose advice he pretended
to ask and dictated their reports. In what did the naval revolution
consist of which he boasted himself the author? In three things:
rejuvenation of methods, redistribution of squadrons, and the
creation of the Dreadnought. 1
It was when occupying the position of Second Sea Lord from

the summer of 1902 to the autumn of 1903 that Fisher tackled the
problem of bringing methods up to date. During the last half
century the navy had undergone a revolution, which was the
counterpart of the Industrial Revolution effected by the introduc
tion of machinery. About the middle of the nineteenth century
the British navy, the model of other navies, was still what it had
been in the days of Nelson. The object in view, when a decision
was sought, was a combat at close quarters. All the guns on one
side of the man-of-war were directed upon the enemy s ship and
if its rigging was successfully smashed and its bridge set on fire,
the ship, thus reduced to a state of inferiority, was boarded. The
seaman s entire art, whether he sought or evaded a grapple, con
sisted in such skilful handling of the sails that the wind which he
could not control brought him as near as possible to the goal in
view. Now
there were no longer masts or sails on men-ot-war,
which depended no longer on the wind but on steam power to
overtake or elude the foe. And, on the other hand, the artillery
had become a scientific piece of mechanism which the gunners
1
For a general account of Sir John Fisher s reforms see the panegyric by Archibald S.
Hurd, British War Fleets, The New Scheme of Reorganization and Mobilization with Special
Reference to the Growth of the German Navy .with Full List of the Fleets and Squadrons at Sea
. .
and Ships in Commission and in Reserve; and Details of Vessels

their Strategical Disposition; the
struck off the War List, 1905. See also the equally enthusiastic articles by Arnold White:
*Can we trust the Admiralty? (National Review, March 1906, vol. xlvii, pp. 68 sqq.) and
Archibald S. Hurd: Progress or Reaction in the Navy (Fortnightly Review, April 15,
1906; vol. Ixxix n.s, pp. 707 sqq.), also the critical article Admiralty Policy and the
Manning of
>
the Fleet by Apex (United Service Magazine, February 1906, vol. xxxii,
pp. 516 sqq.), and Admiral Lord Charles Beresford s violent attack, The Betrayal Being a
Record of Facts concerning Naval Policy and Administration from the Year 1902 to the Present
Time, 1912.
197
must know how to handle so that shots
discharged from a moving
platform might reach, at a range of several miles, an adversary
equally mobile. Nor
was machinery necessary only to navigate
the vessels and bring the guns into
position. Steam engines were
steering apparatus and the
also required to operate the
dynamos,
and electrical engines to work the ammunition loaders and trans
mit the commander s orders, hydraulic machines for the water
tight chambers, machines of compressed air to work the torpe
does and for other purposes and refrigerators to
keep the tem
perature of the store rooms* cool. A competent witness writing in
1910 estimated at a hundred at least the pieces of machinery in
stalled on a 1
battleship of the most recent type. The man-of-war
had become a gigantic factory whose first need was a large num
ber of trained mechanics.
But this revolution whose results were so striking had taken
place without the vessels thus transformed being subjected to the
test of action. The Crimean War which had occurred too
early
and moreover had involved no fighting on a large scale, had
provided an opportunity only for the first experiments with iron
and steam. A few years later, still in the early days of the new
equipment, the American War of Secession had been the occasion
of a number of mechanical experiments which had made a con
siderable impression on public opinion. But it had been a flash in
the pan. On the restoration of peace the American
navy relapsed
into insignificance. After this the
important struggles were fought
on land and the decisive event of the succeeding half century was
the rise of a great land power which
possessed no fleet. Under
these circumstances it is not surprising that
England, faced with
such navies as the French and Russian against which she
judged
it
prudent to arm but which at bottom she despised, delayed to
face the question whether this revolution in the construction of
men-of-war did not demand an equally thoroughgoing revolu
tion in the professional training of their crews.
In high quarters the belief prevailed that, for officers and men
alike, the old method of instruction employed during the great
war which opened the century and which consisted essentially in
the manipulation of sails was the
training required to turn out a
sailor. Any other method was
suspect, as in the schools any
1
Frank Fox, Ramparts of Empire: A View of the Navy from the Imperial Standpoint, 1910,
p. 122.
IpS
attempt to modernize the curriculum was suspect to
the defenders
of the classical tradition. 1
It
required the new naval policy of
Germany and in particular the law of 1900 to provoke a sudden
reaction of British public opinion. Taken by surprise, England
suddenly awoke to the fact that here too she must copy
the
German model. oneNo
was better fitted than Fisher to become
the mouthpiece of the movement. In the instruction he gave to
his subordinates in the Mediterranean he emphasized the two
factors on which in his victory depended, the speed
of
opinion
the ship and the accuracy of her gunnery, and it was this instruc
tion which had impressed Lord Selborne so favourably and placed
Fisher in 1902 at the Admiralty.
A serious problem preoccupied the officers of the As the
fleet.
men-of-war were mechanized the number of engineers and the

to increase. But they
importance of their functions continued
were not in the strict sense of the term officers. They formed a
and
category apart, with a special organization, distinguished
details of uniform. Not only did they form a dis
externally by
tinct branch of the service, they entered it from a special school
which drew its boys from an inferior social class. And the career
of a naval engineer was not only a distinct career from that of a
naval officer but it was comparatively without prospects, since its
a level with that of a captain. However im
highest rank was on
their functions might be the engineers were not regarded
portant
as executive officers .
They belonged to the civil not the executive
branch of the service and were incapable of holding a command.
However great the personal merit
of an engineer, however long
his period of service, he had no hope of seeing himself an officer.
The officer was the man who controlled the conduct of
genuine
an engagement by his orders given in the open air, on the poop.
In the old days of sailing ships the captain had fraternized with all
the members of his crew, whatever their rank. Now the engineers
were nothing but automata, invisible and blind instruments of
his will. But the engineer, the Caliban of the officers corps, began
to revolt against the Prospero of the upper deck. He observed
that many officers, those for instance in the gunnery department,
were scarcely less mechanics than himself and passed their lives
1
See the debates onthis subject in the House of Commons, June 26, 1900 (Parliamentary
discussions at the Royal United
Debates, 4th Series, vol. Ixxxiv, pp. 1128-9), and the
entitled The
Services Institution on June 20 and 28 following an address byj. R. Thursley
Training of Seamen* (The Times, June 21, July 2, 1900).
199
on board under conditions very similar to his own. He demanded
the privileges and standing of the executive officer. And the
the presence in the
problem of status was further complicated by
British navy of a body of marines, who formed an element apart.
The marines composed landing parties, were responsible for a
and
portion of the gunnery on board ship,
fulfilled a further
function, not calculated to make them popular, the maintenance

of discipline on board. They made the composition of a naval
crew still more heterogeneous. If it were thought desirable to
weld the crews into a homogeneous body, why not since the
for solution settle at
problem of the engineers pressed urgently
the same time the problem of the marines? This was what Fisher
attempted within six months of

his arrival at Whitehall, in his
capacity at Second Sea

Lord in charge of the personnel. 1
He revolutionized the entire system by which officers were
recruited and trained. To make the recruiting of officers easier
was an urgent necessity when the number of sailors had risen in
fifteen years from 60,000 to 120,000, The need for officers had in
fact become so acute that it had been found necessary to supply it
by giving commissions wholesale to reserve officers from

the
merchant service. The experiment which had been made of raising
the age for joining the navy in the hope of getting young men on
a success and Fisher
leaving their public schools had not proved
reduced from sixteen to twelve the age at which a future naval
officer began his career. But if they were taken at such an early
1
For tliis reform of Sir John Fisher s see Navy (Personnel) Memorandum dealing with the
Entry, Training and Employment of Officers of the Royal Navy and the Royal Marines, Decem
ber 16, 1902; New Scheme of Naval Training: Selection of Candidates for Nomination as Naval
Cadets, Further Report of Members of the Interview Committee, March 20, 1905. For the results
obtained in three years see A
Statement of Admiralty Policy, November 30, 1905. lecture A
is to say, some weeks be
given by Commander H. Orpen on November 28, 1902 that
fore the publication of Lord Selborne s memorandum, published in The Times of Novem
ber 29, 1902, under the title "The Origin, Evolution and Future of the British Navy
amounts to an excellent sketch of Fisher s plan. For the criticism which the plan provoked
in the navy see Dubitator, The Admiralty Scheme (United Service Magazine, February
1903, vol. xxvi, New Series, pp. 466 sqq,) and Vice-Admiral
C. C. Penrose Fitzgerald,
The Admiralty Scheme the new Regulations for the Entry and Training of Naval
:
Officers (United Service Magazine, February 1903, vol. xxvi, n,s. pp. 586 sqq.). For the
career of an English naval officer at the end of the nineteenth century see the interesting
article The Navy as a Profession/ by Captain R.N. (National Review, January 1899; vol.
xxxii, pp. 700 sqq.), and after the reform Frank Fox, Ramparts of the Empire: View of theA
Navy from an Imperial Standpoint, 1910, pp. 179 sqq. See further two interesting articles,
one dealing with the engineers by Sir William H. White, The Education and Training of
1022 sqq.), the
Engineers: Civil and Naval (Nineteenth Century, June 1906; vol. lix, pp.
other with the marines, S.P.Q.R., The Past and Future of the Royal Marines; as indi
cated in Statement of Admiralty Policy" (United Service Magazine, February 1906,
"A
vol. xxxii n.s, pp. 524 sqq.).
200
age how could the navy be sure of obtaining the most suitable
boys? Must the choice be left to the arbitrary decisions of the
higher command, in other words to favouritism and personal
influence? At the opening of the twentieth
century it was impos
sible to advocate such a
system openly. Must they then institute a
competitive examination? The method surely of pedantic man
darins, and almost barbarous in its intellectual rigour if applied to
these children. compromise was devised. A Committee was
"A
set up on which of the teaching profession had a

a representative
seat with the admirals, the bigwigs of the
navy, whose task it was
to interview candidates, the object of these interviews, which
were to be as informal as possible, being to make sure of their
moral and mental fitness. The Committee drew up a list of the
most suitable from which the First Lord of the Admiralty made
his choice.
For four years the boys were to be given the same education,
whatever branch of the service they would join later. Promoted
to the rank of midshipmen they would continue in that capacity
this common education, but on board ship instead of on land. At
the end of three years, on passing an examination, they would
become acting sub-lieutenants and receive in common special
courses of instruction, at Greenwich for three months, at Ports
mouth for six. Only then at about the age of twenty would they
be divided as far as possible in accordance with personal prefer
ence into distinct groups and receive special training as executive
officers, engineers or marines. The new system of training offi
cers was marked by the following features. In the first place the
instruction was extremely technical, and so urgent was the need
for technical training that this aroused no protest. Already, a year
before the new programme had been worked out, instruction in
the handling of sails and rigging had been abolished and the offi
cers who directed the firing of the guns and the launching of the
torpedoes had been made responsible for the mechanism of the

weapons they employed. Secondly, and this was a bolder step in
an age of specialization, the same instruction was given as long as
possible to all the pupils. This made
it
possible later on to employ
engineers, gunners and executive officers as torpedo gunners.
And
once they had reached the rank of commander, had the
all alike,
same opportunities of promotion in the hierarchy of officers of the

executive branch and were equally eligible for all posts including
201
command at sea. The policy of the Board of Admiralty in

other words Fisher s was to create a body of officers young
who at the moment of mobilization for war will be equally avail
able forall the
general duties of the Fleet and to consolidate into
1
one harmonious whole the fighting officers of the
Navy ,
publication of the new scheme

Less than nine months after the
the Crown
put a mansion in the Isle of Wight at the temporary
disposal of the Admiralty for the education of the new cadets until
the building in course of construction at Dartmouth could be
opened. The experiment so vigorously begun was tenaciously

pursued, at least as regards the executive officers and the engineers.
For in the case of the marines esprit de corps prevented the
applica
tion of the new system . What are we to think of the results?
There were critics who, judging the scheme from the point of
view of technical efficiency, while they recognized the advan
tages which would accrue to officers from knowledge of the
machinery amid which their entire professional career would be
spent, were afraid that the engineers whose special training was
delayed would be less efficient than
they had been under the old
2
system. There were others who, adopting the social standpoint,
doubted whether the scheme was so democratic as its authors
3
made What guarantee was there that the choice of the
out.
Interview Committee which declared candidates for
eligible
Dartmouth was determined by their personal merit and that the
Committee did not instinctively select boys who belonged by
1
Memorandum of December 16, 1902 subfinem. The final sentences which follow read
like the professional
expert s challenge to Parliament: Difficulties there doubtless will be
m carrying this part of the scheme into full effect, but those difficulties have been foreseen
and they will be met. The advantage to the Navy of the realization of the scheme will be
inestimable and permanent; the difficulties will be and transient. The Board are
secondary
conscious that on them alone rests the and they alone have the advantage of knowing
responsibility,
all the conditions which govern the problem.
2
H. of C., May 24, 1906, Bellairs speech and replies by Arthur Lee and E. Robertson
(Parliamentary Debates, 4th Series, vol. clvii, pp. 1461 sqq,, 1471 sqq., 1747 sqq,). What
ever good effects the new
plan may have in other directions, it can hardly increase mater
ially the scientific education of the cadet (A. Lawrence Lowell, The Government of
England, vol. i, p. 104 .).
*
For Fisher s intentions see his Memories, p. 201 *. . This democratic country won t
: .
stand 99 per cent at least of her Naval Officers Ten

being drawn from the It s
Upper
amazing to me that anyone should persuade himself that an Aristocratic Service can be
maintained in a Democratic State. The true democratic
principle is Napoleon "La carridre
s
ouverte aux talents," The

Democracy will shortly realize this, and there will be a dangerous
and mischievous agitation. The secret of successful administration is the
intelligent antici
pation of agitation. But this was written in his old age, after the Great War of 1914, and
is a;i admission that the reform of
1902 had not when he wrote made the officers of the
British navy a democratic
body.
202
birth to the wealthy and governing class? The training, at Dart
mouth first, then during those later years when the young man
served as a midshipman, alone cost his
parents a hundred, perhaps
a hundred and fifty pounds a year. 1 There were no scholarships
for boys of humble origin. They spoke of democratizing the
naval officers by breaking down the barrier which divided them
from the engineers. The barrier was indeed broken down but it
was by making the engineers an aristocratic body.
This reform excited such interest that less attention was paid to
others which concerned not the officers but the crews. But they
had Here also the navy had to be adapted to the
their importance.
new demands of a century not even of steam but of electricity.
Indeed, a year before Fisher s influence had begun to be felt at
the Admiralty instruction in the rigging* had been abolished for
the sailors as well as the officers. The South African War had pro
vided a pretext for replacing the four sailing vessels which served
as training ships by four cruisers. In default of
training ships it
became necessary to organize a new system of training for future
sailors. In future all would receive
elementary instruction in
mechanics, and be given some knowledge of stoking. And all
could be taught the rudiments of gunnery. Since this instruction
did not, like the older training, promote the physical develop
ment of its subjects, gymnastic exercises were instituted. In this
case a method was followed in some respects the reverse of that
pursued in training the officers. Specialization from childhood

was considered beneficial and a body of boy artificers was formed
who would be trained in mechanics from the age of fourteen,
four years that is to say before their admission into the navy. And
the examinations, which after two years on board made an
ordinary seaman an able seaman, would no longer be, as they had
been hitherto, a mere formality. The good effects of this moderni
zation were quickly felt. When the twentieth century opened the
low standard of its gunnery was a disgrace to the British navy.
Within a few years, it would seem, the defect had been made
good. In 1909 Admiral Fisher mentioned with pride the example
1 H. of C, May 24, 1906, Bellairs speech (Parliamentary Debate, 4th. Series, vol. clvii,
p. 1463).
203
of a large ironclad which during some gunning practices hit fifteen

times out of eighteen a target fourteen times smaller than itself
and at a distance of five miles, the vessel moving at a rate of
1
twenty knots, the target at an unknown speed.
At the same time, even before Fisher reached the Admiralty,
far-reaching alterations were made in the system of enlistment.
Since the abolition of the press gang in 1852 the necessary number
of men had been obtained by enlistments termed continuous ,
nominally for twelve years, actually for thirteen or fourteen. For

the twelve years enlistment was commenced at the age of
when the young sailors had already been
eighteen, serying for
two or even two and a half years as boys When . the twelve
yearshad expired, the sailor was urged to re-enlist for a further

period of ten years. That the Admiralty should abandon this
system of enlistment for a very lengthy term was obviously out
of the question; for it secured men in sufficient numbers and of
excellent quality. But doubts had begun to be felt whether, in
view of the constant increase in the number of sailors, sufficient
men would always be found and the example of the German navy
proved that first rate crews could be secured in which the majority
of the seamen were enlisted or actually served for a shorter period. 2
And all the posts on board need not be filled by perfectly trained
seamen. It was therefore decided in 1900 to institute a new class of
enlistment, nominally for twelve years but providing that at the

end of seven years the men should enter the reserve. In a navy
1
entirely manned by Volunteers and where, when the term of

enlistment had expired, the sailor could not be legally compelled
to re-enlist, the new system offered the advantage of forming a
body of reservists whose numbers were thus kept up automatic-

1
Letter to LordEsher, August 27, 1907 (Memories, p. 192).
*
See the curious anecdotes collected by Tirpitz to show the astonishment inspired by
the military* discipline of the German crews. When in the year 1873 an English lady at
Gibraltar saw on board the Friedrich Karl our sailors already, as still at the opening of the
World War, am
superior, I convinced, to the British she exclaimed in surprise "Don t
they look just like sailors?" and when I asked what ever else they should look like, replied
firmly: "But you are not a seagoing nation" (Eritwerungen,p. 10). And again: I remem
ber the astonishment expressed by English officers when in Malta in 1890 we lay in our
old hulks close to the modern vessels of the British and our men were working like slaves,
hard at it the entire day. If, they said, their own men were asked to work so hard, they
would mutiny. They simply couldn t understand such hard labour, especially since, owing
to the short term for which a German sailor serves, it could not be fully utilized. In the
park at Osborne last year a detachment of our marines paraded before the Queen. British
naval officers remarked in astonishment, "The men are soldiers." Their
impression was
not altogether correct but it was significant (ibid., p. 16).
204
1
ally.
was called the Royal Fleet Reserve and it
It
supplemented
the Royal Naval Reserve already forty years old, which was
recruited by the voluntary enlistment of sailors in the merchant
service and which could not
guarantee under all circumstances
the supply of men necessary to keep the crews at full strength
during war. The institution of this new type of enlistment had the
additional advantage of making it possible to effect considerable
economies. The high of pay which must be given to the
rates
men enlisted for a long term and to those who renewed their
enlistment need not be given to such a large number. On the
other hand, the additional expenditure on the
Royal Naval Re
serve which would become if its numbers were in-
necessary,
creas^d, was avoided.
Once again, this last reform was not Fisher s work. But he was
its convinced advocate and did his utmost to
strengthen the Royal
FleetReserve by extending the system of Non-continuous Service.
For the new method of enlistments suited his system admirably
and of a sensational character taken about this
facilitated decisions
time by the Lord of the Admiralty, the Board of Admiralty,
First
and in particular after the close of 1904 by its autocrat. They con
cerned not the personnel but the material of the navy.
When we were relating the history of British imperialism at the

closeof the Boer War we saw how the first Navy Estimates of the
post-war period reached an enormous figure: ^35,476,000, an
increase of .4,306,000 over the preceding year. Three ironclads
and four armoured cruisers were laid down. But the current of
public opinion was flowing in a direction which soon convinced
the Unionist Government that its position had not been strength
ened but weakened by the conclusion of a victorious peace in
South Africa, that the country considered that the war had cost
1
In conformity with the report of a Committee of inquiry Naval Reserves, Report of the
Naval Reserves Committee, January 20, 1903. (Sir Edward Grey s Committee); cf. A State-
ment of Admiralty Policy, November 30, 1905, pp. 20-1. See also on the problem of reserves
H. of C. March 21-2, 1901 (Parliamentary Debates, 4th Series, vol. xci, pp. 806 sqq., 934
sqq.), and the excellent article signed Apex and entitled Admiralty Policy and the Man
ning of the Fleet (United Service Magazine, February 1906; vol. xxxii, New Series, pp. 516
sqq.). For the Royal Naval Reserve which was also reorganized by Fisher see Frank
C.
Bowen, History of the Royal Naval Reserve, 1926.
205
too dear, and would not be placated by a victory which resulted

in a further increase of armaments. If the Navy Estimates in 1904
were higher than in the previous year .36,830,000, an increase
of ji, 3 54,000, it was because two completed ironclads had been
bought from the Government of Chile to prevent

their purchase
by Russia, then at war with England s ally Japan. As a result of the
purchase, two cruisers only

would be laid down instead of three,
which encouraged the hope of considerable economies in future
years. Actually,
the Navy Estimates in 1905 amounted only to
.33,389,000, a reduction of .3,500,000 on the previous year.

Only one cruiser was laid down. Then Lord Cawdor succeeded
Lord Selborne at theAdmiralty and while continuing a policy of
economy -the estimates he prepared at the close of 1905 effected
a reduction of 1,500,000 as compared with 1904 proposed to
incur further expenditure during the following years by laying
down four ironclads. The Liberals who took office at this juncture
deleted from the programme one of the four ironclads and pro
tested against the attempt of a falling Government to force their
hands. Moreover Campbell-Bannerman declared himself author
programme of naval construction

ized to state that in reducing the
contemplated by Lord Cawdor, far

from overruling the Board of
1
he acted with their assent. The Board therefore pos
Admiralty
sessed a definite which for a little over a year had been the
policy,
policy of the First
Sea Lord, and which sought to increase the
7
of the British navy while reducing expenditure. What

efficiency
had been Fisher s
object ever since he
reached high command?
To impress upon his superiorsand subordinates alike the absurd
situation of the British navy, loath to abandon its traditions and
therefore clinging to the methods of the sailing vessel when there
was no longer a in the fleet, a single sail in the
single sailing ship
new men-of-war. But what ideal should an Admiral, a Sea Lord,
pursue in an industrialized navy? The ideal always pursued by the

inventor of a machine, to obtain the same or better results at a
lower cost. It was obvious in particular that the enormous increase
in the of warships due to the invention and progress of
speed
steam navigation, and die marvellous and growing ease of com
munication, by telegraph first, then by wireless telegraphy, were
reducing the size of the earth. It was natural that Britain to pro
tect her vast mercantile marine and to link up the different parts
1
H. of C.July 27, 1906 (Parliamentary Debates, 4th Series, vol. clxii, p. 115).
206
of the immense empire had multiplied her naval stations and
amply furnished them with ships. But was it any longer necessary
to maintain so many ships when faster vessels to which, moreover,
it was easier to give the alarm, could be
despatched more freely
at a signal to any point on the globe? Fewer
ships and fewer naval
stations would suffice. As soon as Fisher became First Sea Lord he ,
used the broom vigorously, and his success in sweeping away sources
of unnecessary expenditure was the true reason why the Navy
Estimates declined in 1905 and the succeeding years. 1 In the first
line alone no less than 130 were given up within a few months.
Fisher proposed to confront foreign nations with a navy for
midable rather by the quality than by the number of its ships.
What then became of die standard, strictly quantitative, which
for the last fifteen years had determined the supposed needs of the
British Admiralty, the Two-Power Standard ? For the last fifteen
years, for during the greater part, indeed almost the whole of the
nineteenth century, the Admiralty had applied a different stan
dard. Then only one other navy counted for anything, namely,
the French, and England was therefore content in peacetime with
a fleet one-third larger than the French. It was not until 1889 that
the First Lord of die Admiralty, Lord George Hamilton, had
asked for a navy equal to, if not slighdy larger than, the two
strongest foreign navies. Which were they? At a moment
2 when
Russia was developing her navy and the Franco-Russian alliance
was taking shape, no one had any doubt. Four years later when
the Unionists vociferously demanded that the Liberal Govern
ment of the day should undertake a new programme of naval
construction on a large scale their speakers put forward plainly
the Franco-Russian peril and the Secretary to the Admiralty
agreed that the minimum strength of the British navy must be
3
equal to the combined navies of France and Russia.
1
For this policy of cleansing the navy see Pretyman s speech, H. of C,, March 6, 1905
(Parliamentary Debates, 4th Series, vol. odii, pp. 438 sqq.).
2
H. of C., March 7, 1889: Lord George Hamilton indeed presented the principle as that
which the Government had already been applying for several years. I have endeavoured
during the past year to study the speeches of those who in previous years have held my
as to ascertain what was the permanent idea under
position, and that of Prime Minister, so
lying their utterances when they spoke of the standard
of strength on which our naval
establishment should be maintained. I think I am correct in saying that that idea has been
that an establishment should be on such a scale that it should at least be equal to the naval
strength of any other two countries (Parliamentary Debates, 3rd Series,
vol. ccocoiii, p.
1171), Cf. H. of C., same sitting, Lord Charles Beresford s ipeech (ibid., p. 1203).
3 H. of
C., December 19, 1893, speeches by Lord George Hamilton, Arthur Balfour,
Admiral Field, Macfarlane, Gibson Bowles, and Joseph Chamberlain and the statement by
VOL VI 9 2O7
We must however inquire how the Admiralty interpreted the

Two-Power Standard. The British fleet had to fulfil three
pur
the mercantile marine, safe
poses to fight a hostile navy, protect
guard communications between the various parts of the empire.
But it was the first of these which the Two-Power Standard
only
had in view. It was applied only to the ironclads, the
battleships.
The cruisers intended to serve the two other purposes might be
built in unlimited numbers. But could this distinction between
the battleship and the cruiser be maintained any longer now that
the armoured cruiser had been invented? It was in the estimates
for 1897 that there
appeared for the first time six armoured crui
sers of the
Cressy replacing the large cruisers
type simply pro
tected for which the budgets immediately preceding made provi
sion, their displacement was 12,000 tons, their length 440 feet,
they carried two 9.2 inch B.L guns, twelve 6 inch Q.F. guns,
the armour in the middle of the vessel a thickness
plating attained
of six inches, their horse-power was 21,000 and their speed 21
knots. It was a speed equal to that of protected cruisers of the
Powerful type, but the new cruisers were armoured and their
armouring was superior to that of the oldest ironclads the Admir

alty still kept in commission. In short they were cruisers in their
speed but the protected cruisers were powerless against them.

They were not simple cruisers but real men-of-war. The Cressys
were followed by the Drakes, and these by the Counties. Then
after these two
experiments came the Devonshires which hardly
1
differed in
speed, armour or armament from the Cressys. In four
years a revolution had taken place.

The British fleet in 1900 did
not contain a single armoured cruiser. At the end of 1905 it
possessed twenty-six. All the calculations of the Two-Power

Standard were thus falsified.
Many Liberal members of Parlia
ment argued, and their contention was never satisfactorily refuted,
the representative of the Government, Sir U. Kaye Shuttlcworth (Parliamentary Debates,
4th Series, vol. xix, pp. 1775, 1810, 1822, 1828, 1837, 1856, 1873), See especially Lord
George Hamilton s and Arthur Balfour s speeches and Lord Charles Bercsford s memo
randum of November 18. Some years later, when the entente in the Far East between
France, Germany and Russia suggested more dangerous eventualities than a Franco-
Russian alliance it was even questioned whether the Two-Power Standard would suffice
to ensure the safety of the
country (H, of C, March 5, 1897, Sir Charles Dilke s speech;
ibid,, vol. xlvii, pp. 68-9).
1
Fred T.Jane, The British Battle Fleet, vol. ii, pp. nor sqq. The Drakes were larger
(14,000 tons) and faster (23 knots), the Counties smaller (9,800 tons) and of much the same
speed as the Drakes, The Devonshires, slightly smaller (10,850 tons) than the Cressys were
not quite so strongly armed (their largest
guns were 7,5 inches) and their speed was dis
of the Drakes and Counties.
tinctly less than that
208
that the British navy was numerically superior not only to two
but to the three most powerful foreign navies. 1 But in fact when
we read the lengthy debates which took place in the House of
Commons in 1904 and 1905 on the question of the Two-Power
Standard we receive the impression that the politicians at the
Admiralty had lost their bearings and were uncertain whether to

defend the standard or represent it as obsolete. 1 think , stated
Lord Selborne in the House of Lords, I shall carry your Lordships
with me when I say that you cannot compare with any reason or
fairness the naval expenditure of this country with that of any
two or more Powers, because what our navy has to do is totally
different from what the navies of any one, two or three other
Powers have to do. 2 Also Lord Goschen: The Two-Power
Standard is gone. It is no longer applicable to the state of Europe.
... As long as changes continue in the balance of naval power and
in the fleets of other countries, it is
impossible for the Admiralty
3
to lay down any fixed standard. What in truth was left about
1905 of the Franco-Russian peril?
The French navy was still the most powerful in Europe after
the British.But if it was numerically the strongest, prestige did its
not stand high. The inventive genius of its engineers was univer
sally recognized. But the caprices of Parliamentary

committees
and the effects of Cabinet crises had made it a navy built on no
unifonji plan, what was called in jest a fleet of samples, and since
1902 under the Pelletan government it had still further deterior
ated. Not only did the French Admiralty anticipate the wishes of
the British by giving up the construction of great ironckds
and
1
H. of C, August 4, 1904, Edmund Robertson s speech: . . At the present time, from
.
the report in his hand, he saw that we had battleships of the first class, 49; the next three
Naval Powers France, Germany, and Russia had 50 and all the other navies of the
world 80. That was a Three-Power Standard. Wehad five-sixths of the battleship strength
of all the rest of the world. In armed cruisers we had 28; France, Germany, and Russia 27;
and the rest of the world 42. Here again there was a Three-Power Standard. In protected
cruisers of the first class we had 21 ; France, Germany, and Russia 13 and the other navies
;
of the world, 16. In second-class cruisers we had 49, as against 27 for France, Germany, and
Russia; and 59 for all the other navies. In third-class cruisers we had 32; France, Germany,
and Russia 32 and the rest of the world 55. So that in the case of the fleet in being we were
;
to fleets on
maintaining a Three-Power Standard. It was the same story with regard
paper. In battleships and armed cruisers we were building 39
as against 35 by France,
Germany, and Russia, and 68 by all the other navies of the world. And Robertson
re
marks that the British navy built faster than any other (Parliamentary Debates, 4th Series,
vol. cxxxix, p. 1054). Cf. March 6, 1905, speeches by Herbert Roberts, Reginald Lucas,
T. Lough (ibid., vol. cxlii, pp. 456 sqq., 459 sqq., 463 sqq.).
2
H. of L., August 9, 1904 (Parliamentary Debates, 4th Series, vol. cxxxix, p. 1529).
3
H. of L., March 21, 1905 (ibid., vol. cxliv, p. 610).
209
FOREIGN POLICY: THB ARMY AND NAVY
on the formation of a fleet of submarines and

concentrating
torpedo boats, but its haphazard methods and undisciplined crews
had made the French navy the laughing-stock of the world. The
Russian fleet left the Baltic and, after its command had given in
the North Sea a pitiful display of brutality and bad nerves, had
confronted the Japanese fleet which had already proved its worth
in 1904 and had been annihilated at Tshushima, But other navies
were coming to the fore, the Japanese in the first place, but also
the American and the German. The British Admiralty had deci
ded to make an ally
of the Japanese fleet. With the American
navy it was impossible to compete. The United States were
wealthy enough to build warships as they pleased.

as
many
London accordingly decided to proclaim the principle that war
would never be a nation of kindred race and lan
waged against
guage so that in
applying the
Two-Power Standard the American
fleet need not be taken into account. But what two navies could
the British take into account, if they were thinking all the time of
only one: the German?

For the past five years the Emperor William assisted by Admiral
in the task of providing himself with a
Tirpitz had been engaged
formula if the
fleet so
powerful that to use the
official strongest
navalpower engaged own supremacy
it, it would endanger its .
No one could mistake the allusion when a memorandum inspired

by Fisher drew the attention of Parliament and the nation to a
circumstanced
navy of the most efficient
type and so fortunately
that it is able to concentrate almost the whole of its fleet at its
1
home fronts .
The days had therefore returned when before the adoption of

the Two-Power Standard Britain had only one foreign navy to
consider. But thatnavy was no longer the French ana there was
this further difference from the earlier period that the German
as the French had been in the middle of the nine
navy was not,
teenth century, the sole foreign navy which counted. There were
others whose friendshipit was a system of
prudent to gain by
ententes For the time there was no longer any ques
and alliances.
tion of the Two-Power Standard and when after a short interval

it would make its
reappearance it would possess,
as we shall see
later, a totally different significance,
1
Navy: Distribution and Mobilisation of the Fleet, December 6, 1904, p. 2.
210
In the meanwhile the Admiralty under the inspiration of Sir

1
John Fisher effected a significant redistribution of the squadrons.
In the East only one squadron of cruisers would in future be
stationed, entirely concentrated, after the abolition of the station
atEsquimault on the Canadian coast and the Pacific station, in the
three stations of China, Australia, and the East Indies and placed
under the command
of the Commander-in-Chief of the Chinese
station. After thisnothing until the Cape, where a squadron was
stationed consisting of second- and third-class cruisers to guard
communications between the east and west that is to say, in
these distant seas England yielded supremacy to the rival navies
of the United and Japan and accepted the second place,
States,
because she was obliged to concentrate her attention on European
waters. In the Atlantic the same homeward movement was effec
ted. The north Atlantic squadron was abolished and the squadron
in the south Atlantic, charged with the protection and policing of
the West Indies, was profoundly modified. The number of ships
was considerably reduced and the squadron would henceforward
be confined to five vessels called the Particular Service Squadron
to which this was another of Fisher s innovations cadets and
boys would be sent to be trained by actual service at sea. These

ships would make three cruises yearly, one of them to the West
Indies, but would always return to their base which was not on
the American but on the British coast, at Devonport.
Where then would the battleships be concentrated? The Medi
terranean squadron was reduced to eight ironclads and an ade
quate complement of cruisers. The day had gone by when a war
with France and Russia was expected and the Mediterranean
seemed likely to be the principal theatre of naval warfare. The
Channel fleet, on the other hand, was transferred to Gibraltar
under the new name of the Atlantic fleet. Like the Mediterranean
fleet it was composed of eight battleships with an adequate num-
1 For this aspect of Fisher* s policy see the memorandum signed by Lord Selborne
entitled: Navy: Distribution and Mobilisation of the Fleet, December 1904, which is
<5,
completed by the Circular Letter to Commanders-in-Chief at Home and Abroad, signed

Evan
MacGregor and dated December 10, 1904, and Lord Selborne s memorandum entitled:
Redistribution of the Fleet: Arrangements consequent on the Redistribution of the Fleet, March 15,
1905.
211
ber of cruisers. It took over a small part of the area

formerly
assigned to the Mediterranean fleet, but must be prepared to sail
to whatever
point in western waters the exigencies of war might
require
its
despatch. What did this point seem likely to be? The
extensive preparation made by the Admiralty in the waters sur
rounding the British coast enables us to guess, The Home Fleet

under the new title of Channel fleet
comprised, in accordance
with the programme laid down by Fisher in December 1904, the
large number of twelve battleships, not to mention the cruisers.

A year later it consisted of seventeen battleships besides six
armoured cruisers of the most recent type. The of soscrapping
many antiquated vessels placed enough men at the
disposal of the
Admiralty to maintain all three squadrons at full strength. Each
was to be permanently concentrated under the command of its
admiral, though to prevent the captains losing all
personal initia
tive a few would be detached from time to time for isolated

units
manoeuvres. Measures were also taken to ensure the homogeneous
composition of the crews. Hitherto ships stationed in home

waters had been in commission for an indefinite a
period, quarter
of the crews being renewed annually, those stationed in distant
7
waters in commission for three years, a period so

long that it had
been necessary to detach from time to time a number of sailors
and send them ashore to undergo a course of special training and

send on others to take their place. In future all ships, whatever
would be in commission only for two years during
their station,
which, except for some very exceptional reason, no officer or

sailor would be allowed to leave the to which he had been
ship
1
assigned.
Other measures of equal importance were adopted to provide
for the defence of the British coast by employing the reserve.
According to the system hitherto in force, it consisted of vessels
older than the others and out of date, which lay up empty
slightly
in the home ports. If it became necessary to mobilize them, what
a time it would take to them out, provide them with crews and
fit
tram men, unaccustomed to active service, to take part in naval

1
V-ry strict measures wete adopted at the same time to prevent the squadrons being
depleted of too large anumber of vessels on the ground of repairs. No
ship might be laid
up for repairs for more than thirty days a year and repairs must always be carried out in
such way that in case of necessity the ship could be ready for sea in four days.
a more No
than two ships might be detached for repair from the Channel Fleet, not more than one
from the Atlantic and Mediterranean fleets (Circular Letter to Commanders-in-Chief, Decem
ber 10, 1904).
212
warfare All this Fisher changed within a few weeks, one is
!
temp
ted to say within a few days. 1 Thanks to the
policy of reducing
the number of units hitherto dispersed by the Admiralty in dis
tant oceans, he had at his disposal a fleet of twelve ironclads, four
teen armoured cruisers, and eight large cruisers which
protected
he could station in home waters in commission*. And thanks to
the purge he had effected he disposed of sufficient sailors to man
these vessels with what he termed nucleus crews, about two-fifths
of the full complement, composed of men whom we might term
skilled labourers in those large factories which modern men-of-
war have become. At regular intervals reservists joined them for
training, who would then be competent in case of war to play the
part of unskilled labourers and enable the reserve squadron to
reinforce the Channel fleet in a few hours. Behind these vessels,
there were other ships exempted from the condemnation passed
upon all the worthless material of the British navy. If not suffi
ciently good to be kept armed, they were not bad enough to be
sold as scrap iron. But it was the creation of a large reserve fleet
permanently in commission which together with the redistribu

tion of squadrons constituted the original features of the new
naval policy. It made possible the complete and instantaneous
mobilization of a formidable fleet in home waters. And the need
for efficiency was reconciled with the need for economy. But
once again were not the two things at bottom synonymous ? True
economy is to obtain the maximum of results with a minimum of
expenditure. A policy of concentration offerees was
thus carried
out, aimed at a new enemy. It was the German navy.
These innovations made by the British Admiralty aroused in
Germany feelings not of alarm or annoyance but rather of grati
fied pride. Not only were the Germans proud of the fact that it
was their example which had induced the British Admiralty to
throw off its lethargy and modernize its methods, so that even in
a sphere where Britain had so long been regarded as supreme, the
1
The test which is to be made to-day of the readiness for immediate service of a portion
of the recently reconstituted naval reserve in the home ports makes the beginning of what
may almost be regarded as a new epoch in the history of the British Fleet. ... It is possible
that the British public may not realize at once all that this new departure means in terms
of naval efficiency; but that it will be patent to every foreign professional critic is beyond
doubt. It is, indeed, a remarkable fact that within a few weeks of what many people
regard as a revolution in the system of our organization for war, we
are able to witness
a perfectly equipped squadron of ships in reserve proceeding to sea for a week s cruise,
an officer or
organized and prepared for instant battle, and this without withdrawing
man from duties or studies he may be engaged in elsewhere (The Times, February 9, 1905).
213
German Empire had become the model nation, but the redistri
bution of squadrons could be legitimately regarded at Berlin as
victory won by the partisans of a strong navy.

1
the first
Only
four years after the passing of the law of 1900 Germany had com
pelled England to reduce her fleet in the Pacific and withdraw it
from North American waters. Her high-seas fleet stationed be
tween Heligoland and Kiel, still in its infancy but thoroughly up
to date, which could count a dozen ironclads and for the next
fifteen years would be increased in the regular proportion provi
ded by law, had reason to be proud of the strange influence, the
attraction, which we might almost call a suction, that it exer
cised upon the British navy. In England Fisher had
skilfully con
trived to win the support of the Liberals, who on the
verge of
taking office were delighted that a great sailor, an expert in the
art of war, should declare it
possible to reduce the navy estimates
without weakening the navy. But he abolished too high-handedly
too many posts not to make many enemies among those in high
command. With the officers of the fleet and the Unionist politi
cians he was as
unpopular as he was popular with the Liberals and
for the same reason. This no doubt annoyed him and it was
prob
ably the desire to put an end to his unpopularity which led him
to proclaim sooner than he had wished and with an
imprudent
flourish of trumpets the creation of the
Dreadnought.
Immediately on his arrival at the Admiralty Fisher had appoin

ted a Committee on Designs composed of naval officers and
engineers to assist the director of naval construction to prepare

plans for men-of-war in accordance with the instructions of the
Board, in other words of the First Sea Lord. At the same time he
1
It was
certainly our example which compelled the English also to set to work and
master once more the methods of naval warfare, Germany s position in the world set a
standard which was methodically pursued by a navy which was still practically without
vessels.We had no alternative but to build ships or make foreigners a present of our ideas.
We built and when the world war broke out were still
superior to the English in the qual
ity and handling of our vessels though not in their number, although the days when their
tactics were a traditional routine and their manoeuvres chaotic had
long passed* (Von Tir-
pitz, Erinnerungen, p. 47), It will be seen that Tirpitz regarded the German navy as superior
in quality to the British even before the laws of 1898 and 1000 had been
passed. In 1892
the German navy had, to him, invented a new of naval tactics which all
according system
the other navies
beginning with the British subsequently copied (ibid., p. 46).
214
gave orders to speed up

work in all the dockyards so as to turn out
ships
more quickly and meet the competition of the German fleet.
A year had not passed before the results of his initiative became
In September the papers proclaimed to the world that a
visible.
man-of-war was being built in the utmost secrecy, whose launch
ing would mark
an epoch in the history of the British fleet. On
October 2, 1905, the first plate of her keel was laid and she was
launched on February 10, 1906. It had been expected that she
would not be for service until sixteen months after the
ready
construction began. In December 1906, the Dreadnought left the
docks and received the official visit of the First Lord of the Ad
Lord. The most advanced methods of
miralty and the First Sea
been employed to expedite the construc
organizing labour had
tion of the konclad with the avowed object of laying down
rules
1
to speed up normal construction. But this extraordinary speed
was to a large extent deceptive. The necessary material had been
in advance, and material and guns intended for other
got together
their construction
vessels had been diverted to the Dreadnought,
2
being correspondingly delayed.
What then was this masterpiece of the British Admiralty? The
than any ironclad pre
Dreadnought was a monster vessel, larger
17,900 tons as against 16,000
more powerfully
viously built
armed and swifter. Instead of four twelve-inch guns and ten
six-
so arranged that six could

inch, she possessed ten twelve-inch guns
be pointed together in all positions, eight in almost all. Her speed
was twenty-one knots instead of the eighteen and a half of
iron
the
clads of the Lord Nelson type, almost equalling twenty-two
and a half knots of the armoured cruisers of the Devonshire type.
The employment for the first time of the turbine had made
this
last improvement possible. At the same

time in a more genuine
the three armoured cruisers laid down as provided in the
secrecy
as sensational as the
estimates for 1905 constituted an innovation
Dreadnought. The Invisibles had a displacement of 17,250 tons,
not exceeded
whereas the displacement of the Devonshires had
of eight twelve-inch guns; the
10,850. They had an armament
inches. Their
Devonshires carried no guns of more than 7-5
of six.
armour plating at its thickest measured seven inches instead
was knots. They were genuine men-of-
Their speed twenty-five
*
The Times, October 13, 19O5- , ..
* Fred T. Jane, The British Battle Fleet, vol. 11, p. 126 n.
215
war scarcely less powerfully armed than the Dreadnoughts and
markedly swifter.
The immediate advantages which accrued to England from the
invention of the Dreadnought1 were incontestable.
In the first place the innovation took all the rival navies
by
surprise. While England blazoned so dramatically in the face of
the world her increased speed of naval construction and the
greater
strength of her vessels, the other Powers found themselves com
pelled, if they wanted to launch men-of-war, not below the stan
dard of the Dreadnoughts, to alter their programmes of naval
construction, possibly even to stop the building of certain ships
and recommence it on new lines. sEngland gained time.
And time was also gained in another way. The German coast
peninsula. No communication
line was cut in two by the Danish
could be established in wartime between the Baltic coast and the
coast of the North Sea except by
forcing a passage through
the straights which divide the Danish islands from Sweden, and
the British fleet would have to be faced before
junction with the
North Sea fleet could be established. It was to establish direct
naval communications between the two
portions of the German
coast that the Kiel Canal had been cut. But the
Dreadnoughts
drew too much water and were too huge to pass through the
Canal. If in her turn Germany were to build
Dreadnoughts,
either her fleet of Dreadnoughts must be divided into two or con
centrated entirely on one side of the Kiel Canal,
leaving the other
coast devoid of Dreadnoughts which in no circumstances could
take refuge from one sea in the other. The invention of the
English Dreadnought confronted Germany with the urgent task
of making the Kiel Canal wider and deeper so that it would be
2
navigable by Dreadnoughts. It was a task which would require
many years to complete.
1
For the Dreadnought its merits and dangers see, in addition to the
general works
already mentioned, two articles signed Captain R.N. and entitled respectively "1881-
1906: The Inflexible and the Dreadnought and Food for Thought which appeared at an
interval of two months in the United Service Magazine for November 1906
(vol. xxxiv,
New Series, pp. 121 sqq.), and January 1907 (vol. xxxiv, New Series, pp. 350 sqq.) aid
Archibald Hurd s reply to this writer s criticisms in an article entitled Uneasiness. Is it
justified? which appeared in the same number, January 1907, of the United Service Maga
zine. See further Arthur Lee, A Plea for
maintaining our Battleship Programme (National
Review, August 1906, vol. xlvii, pp. 914 sqq,) and against the Dreadnought W. H. White,
;
The Navy Estimates and Naval Debate (Nineteenth Century,

April 1908, vol. Ixiii, pp.
5l7sqq.).
*
t
The question of the Kiel Canal and the difficulties it presented to the increase in the
sizeof warships had already caused anxiety to the German
Admiralty before the Dread-
2l6
But Fisher s dramatic surprise had its drawbacks.
In the first
England lost a moral advantage. In modern
place,
times her naval policy had hitherto
presented a defensive aspect.
To possess a navy stronger than the French, as strong, even a little
stronger, than the French and Russian navies combined, never to
engines of war but to leave that
take the initiative in inventing
responsibility to some other nation, France for example, whose

engineers had created the torpedo boat, the armed cruiser, and
submarine, to wait until the experiment had been made abroad
and then build torpedo-destroyers and torpedo boats, submarines,
and armoured cruisers in reply to those already invented by the
enemy nation such hitherto had been the British method. Now
all this was
changed. The Admiralty seemed to be proclaiming to
the world that in the armament competition it would hencefor
ward take the initiative and challenge rival navies to overtake the
British. At bottom to be sure it regarded itself as on the defensive
against the threat of German attack. But it gave this defensive the
air of an offensive, and moreover an offensive
theatrically staged.
And did this invention of the Dreadnought, so loudly advertised
by Fisher and his friends, really give the British navy such a lead
over the others that it could not be caught up in four or five
years ? This ostentatious advertisement was calculated to alarm the
other nations unnecessarily and hasten their reply. The Dread
nought had not left the dock before Germany laid down a ship
whose dimensions were to rival those of this yet mysterious mon
ster. And when later on
Germany would build Dreadnoughts
nought made its appearance. See Von Miiller s letter to Tirpitz of February 5, 1905: It is
obvious that our main strength must lie in vessels of the line and in torpedo boats. It is
equally clear that in so far as natural difficulties do not prevent it the gigantic battleship
must be the type of our future men-of-war, indeed, that we shall do well to anticipate in
this direction the latest types of vessels contructed by our opponent. But we have to face
a natural obstacle, the size of the canal between the Baltic and North Sea. It might indeed
be argued that to concentrate our naval power on vessels of 17,000 or 18,000 tons is so
important that it would be better to give up the use of the canal than the giant man-of-
war. I, however, do not set so high a value on the latter. To my mind the strategical con
centration of our fleet by the canal is more important than its tactical concentration in
these monster men-of-war and I would therefore not adopt die latter until domestic con
ditions permit the canal to be reconstructed* (Tirpitz, Politische Dokumente, vol. i, p. 15).
It was, we must add, not only the Kiel Canal but the waters around the North Sea ports
which the German naval authorities would be obliged to deepen by extensive dredging
operations to enable monster battleships to move freely. Another unexpected advantage
for the British Dreadnoughts. *Thc German Admiralty is going, is indeed obliged, to
spend 12 J million sterling in dredging so as to allow these existing ships of ours to go and
fight them in their own waters, when before they could not do so. It was, indeed, Machia
a
vellian enterprise of Providence on our own behalf that brought about the evolution of
the Dreadnought* (Letter from Admiral Fisher to King Edward, 1907, Memories* p. 15).
217
every year, she in turn would enjoy an unexpected advantage

over England. The British fleet was an old fleet containing many
all the value
antiquated vessels. If the Dreadnought really possessed
Fisher claimed for it, these old ships would be rendered worthless
as soon as the German Admiralty began building Dreadnoughts
and confronted England with a navy consisting entirely of modern
vessels. The fact that her navy was only a few years old, hitherto a
disadvantage for Germany, would, Fisher s critics maintained,

prove an advantage, if the superiority of the Dreadnought over
previous types of vessels were really so great.
For in that case the
invention amounted to scrapping at a stroke the entire British
fleet builtbefore 1905.
But it was not so certain after all that die Dreadnought was the
marvellous innovation it was declared to be. All navies about 1905
were tending to adopt this type of monster vessel. The idea would
seem to have been borrowed by the British Admiralty from the
Italian navy which perhaps would have been the first to launch a
1
Dreadnought if the nation had been sufficiently wealthy. Already
Japan and Germany were considering and the United States had
actually begun the construction of new types of ironclad strikingly
similar to the Dreadnought. And it might well be asked whether
when the construction of larger and still larger vessels better
armed, better armoured, and swifter was the fashion in naval
quarters, the invention of the torpedo and the development
of
heavy artillery were not changing the entire conditions of naval
warfare? Of what use would be a sea monster, which cost
.1,800,000 to build, if a single torpedo or shell could sink it in a
few minutes ? A
war without precedent in history was expected
to prove these criticisms sound. But for the moment the Russo-
Japanese War, the first real naval war the world had witnessed
since the days of Trafalgar and Aboukir, seemed to justify the
champions of monster vessels. The torpedo had played a very
minor part and the war had been decided by a battle between
2
ironclads, a Trafalgar of the Far East. And even if there had been
1 F.
T. Jane, The British Battle Fleet, vol. ii, pp. 134 sqq.
Lessons of the Japanese War (The Times, January
a
1905). Admiral the Hon. E. R.
<5,
Fremande The Japanese Trafalgar (United Service Magazine, July 1905; vol. xxi, New
Series, pp. 349 sqq.). Cyprian A. G. Bridge, The Russo-Japanese Naval Campaign of
4
1904 (Naval Annual, 1905, pp. 97 sqq.). Captain A. T. Mahan, Naval Administration and
Warfare, Some General Principles with other Essays, 1908, p. 165. The French Minister of
Marine, Camille Pelletan, had adopted the ideas of the new school which regarded the
epoch of large ironclads as ended by the advent of torpedo boats and submarines; and the
218
no Russo-Japanese War to justify the Dreadnought, the same
impulse, the same instinct of megalomania, would undoubtedly
have produced the same effect. Fisher, who prided himself on his
modernity and was determined to introduce into the British navy
the methods of large-scale industry, was perhaps in his patronage
of the Dreadnought the victim of industrialism. Of its very nature
the machine signifies first and foremost an economy of energy in
the pursuit of a given object. But it also signifies production on a
large scale, fabrication of the colossal, and in this aspect often pro
duces a waste of energy in the pursuit of an aim sentimental
rather than rational. The invention of the Dreadnought may be
regarded as a challenge launched by particular shipbuilders against

their rivals. The builders of German liners said to the builders of
British: You are building transatlantic giants, your Olympics,
we shall build Imperators. And the builders of British men-of-
war spoke the same language. You are building- large ironclads,
we shall construct giant ironclads, Dreadnoughts, and if you in
turn build Dreadnoughts, we
shall reply by building super-
Dreadnoughts/ On balance when war broke out the advantage

1
of one nation over another as regards the dimensions of its ships

would be the very trifling advantage of a few months. But we
shall understand the nature of the conflict better if we regard it as
a war already being waged in peacetime. It was not simply that
preparations were being made for a future battle of Dreadnoughts.

The battle had been joined. The question was, which of the two
nations would admit ruin first?
At the end of 1906 a mutiny of serious proportions in which

civilians participated broke out in the Royal Naval Barracks at
Portsmouth. It was of course quickly suppressed, but though a
deterioration of the French navy under his administration seemed to confirm the lessons
of the Japanese Trafalgar* (Naval Annual, 1909, pp. 15 sqq.).
1
For a comparison between the giants of the mercantile marine and the giants of the
navy see Frank Fox, Ramparts of the Empire :A View of the Navy from an Imperial Standpoint,
1910, p. 14: The Lusitania is 785 feet long, the Dreadnought 490 feet. But whilst
in
breadth the Lusitania has 88 feet, not much more than a tenth of her length, the Dread
nought has 82 feet, over a sixth of her length. The indicated H.P. of the Atlantic
liner is
68,000, giving a speed of 26 knots; of the Dreadnought 27,500, giving a speed of nearly
22 knots.*
219
number of the mutineers were sentenced, some of the sentences

were reduced and Campbell-Bannerman speaking in the House
of Commons let it be understood that all might be reduced before
their expiration. On the other hand, several of the officers
against
whom the mutiny had been made were deprived of their com
mand, one was reprimanded, and the officer who, in consequence
of these changes, took command of the barracks, offended suppor
ters of the old traditions by the tone of democratic good fellow
ship with which he spoke to his men on his first introduction to

them. At the same time rumours began to circulate, which would
shortly assume serious proportions,

of a dissension in the high
command. Everywhere two hostile parties were in existence,
Fisher s
supporters
and his enemies. The Commander-in-Chief
of the Channel fleet who in case of war would presumably be
come Commander-in-Chief of the entire navy was said to be at
daggers drawn; on the one hand with the officer in command of
the squadron of cruisers attached to his fleet, on the other with
the First Sea Lord, a condition of affairs which gave rise to unfor
tunate incidents at the manoeuvres of 1908. In 1904 the report of
the Esher Committee had contrasted, with the spirit of faction
which poisoned army headquarters, the harmonious co-operation
traditional in the high command of the navy. Had the three years
of Fisher dictatorship put an end to it? These rumours and epi
s
sodes must have been solid comfort for German statesmen.

The German Government however was not having an easy
had not been a success for its diplomats. Then
task. Algeciras
Holstein who had been recalled had avenged himself by spreading

in the
press
infamous accusations against the Emperor s most inti
mate friends. Meanwhile, alleged scandals in the Colonial Admin
istration were the object of violent debates in the Reichstag, and
a rising of some negro tribes in South-West Africa was suppressed
only with considerable difficulty. But the Reichstag s refusal in

December 1906 demanded by the Chancellor
to vote the credits
II and his Prime Minister
for its
suppression provided William
with the opportunity to re-establish their authority. It was dis
solved in conformity with the tradition of Bismarck and at the
following election in February 1907 the Opposition suffered a

severe defeat: the Social Democrats lost about half their seats. It
was a contrast with the British and French of the pre

elections
vious year. In France three years government by a Bohemian had
220
lowered the French fleet several
degrees in the naval hierarchy of
Europe. What was happening in every rank of the British navy
gave some ground for fearing that
England had caught the infec
tion from France. In Germany alone the Government was able
to maintain authority against the attacks of democratic anarchy.
its
This encouraged the German Government to approach in a spirit

of insolent cynicism the sessions of the Hague Conference which
met at the beginning of the summer after three years of laborious
negotiation between the Great Powers. The programme of the
Conference as drawn up by the Russian Government in April
1906 was confined to the development of the Hague Court of
Arbitration, the reform of international law governing warfare
on land and sea and the extension of the Geneva convention to
the latter. But the British Government insisted that the limitation
of armaments should be discussed and to announce its intention
to the world made use of a novel method.
The Speaker, a small weekly review which ever since the Boer
War had conducted a violent campaign against imperialism and
militarism, appeared in a new form in the early part of 1907, not
to change its policy but better equipped with funds to pursue it
with even greater vigour under a new editor, the eminent journa
list, H. W. Massingham. The first number of the remodelled
review, now called The Nation, opened with an important article

on the Hague Conference written by Campbell-Bannerman,
evidently with the approval of his Cabinet. It began by recalling
that the object for which the Conference had been originally
summoned in 1898 was precisely to discuss the problem of limit
ing armaments; if since that date the burden of armaments had
considerably increased, pacific ideals had made equal progress.
Surely the time had come to satisfy their devotees by some prac
tical limitation of armaments. England, Sir Henry pointed out
and here we see what a valuable support for his plea were the re
forms carried out by Haldane at the War Office and by Fisher at
the Admiralty had already set the example by reducing her
military and naval expenditure. She would go further
in that
direction if the other powers would follow her lead. Moreover,
such a policy would not endanger her supremacy at sea. For the
sea power of this country implies no challenge to any single
State or group of States. I am persuaded that throughout the
world that power is recognized as non-aggressive and innocent
221
of designs against the independence, the commercial freedom,
and the legitimate development of other States. Our fleets . . . . . .
carry with them no menace across the waters of the world but a
message of the most cordial goodwill, based on a belief in the
community of interests between the nations/

This quaint manifesto which began with a pacifist1 act of faith
to conclude by subscription to the creed of Mahan created a bad
impression in every Continental country. When it confused in

this way the freedom of mankind with the naval supremacy of
England, was the British Government deceiving itself or with an

even greater simplicity trying to deceive other nations? The
French fleet was deteriorating, the Russian had been almost wiped
out and the German fleet, which promised to be more dangerous,
had not had time to become sufficiently large to threaten the
safety of the British coast. A
general limitation of armaments on
the basis of the status quo would be the cheapest way for Britain to
perpetuate her naval supremacy.

We
must, however, bear in mind the difficult position in which
the Liberal Cabinet was placed at the opening of the second Hague
Conference. Disarmament was part of its programme. On the
eve of the General Election the Prime Minister had formally
pledged himself to it. After the Election, when the programme
2
submitted to the powers by the Russian Government had just

been made public, a Liberal member of the House of Commons
had moved a resolution demanding a drastic reduction of arma
ments and the insertion of the question in the agenda of the Con
ference. Replying for the Government Sir Edward Grey was
3
compelled to accept the motion. But a Unionist member pro
posed an amendment declaring that th naval supremacy of Great
1 It was
in 1907 during the discussions which preceded and accompanied the second
Hague Conference that the word pacifist first became current. See Speaker, March 30,
1907, Economist, July 6, 1907. Jt makes its first appearance in the Grosse Politik ... on
February 18, its second on March 12 under the pen of Von Schon. Hatzfeld uses it on
May 8, on October ai. The French origin of the word (see my History, vol. v,
Marschall
p. 66 shown by the following quotation from the National Review (October 1907, vol.
n. is
I, p. 154): From that moment commenced the education of French governments and the
awakening of the French nation to the sterner aspects of national existence, and the aban
donment of those amiable illusions which, under the influence of pacifists*, and other
perilous charlatans, the Republic had begun to cherish. But its use did not become fixed
as quickly as one might imagine: as late as July 31, 1914, Sir Francis ^Bertie writes to his
government: *M. Jaure s has been killed in a restaurant by a young man on the ground that
he was a pacifist and a traitor (British Documents . vol. xi, p. 233).
. .
2
Speech at the Albert Hall, December 21, 1905.
8
H. of C, May 9, 1906, Vivian s motion (Parliamentary Debates, 4th Series, vol. clvi,
pp. 1383 sqq.).
222
Britain must be maintained and Grey, while asking the mover to
withdraw it so as not to hamper the Government s action, said
that he felt as much as any man the force of his argument. The
Admiralty felt it even more

strongly. The following winter
Fisher asked for the construction in 1907 of three new Dread
noughts. If it gave him

the ships, the Liberal Government, only
a year after takingoffice, would return to the old path of large
naval estimates and competition in armaments; if it refused, he
threatened to retire and with him three other members of the
Board of Admiralty. How could the Cabinet escape the impasse?
By developing a plea which appears to have originated with the
Unionist leader of the Opposition, Balfour,1 and maintaining that
the British navy, unlike die armies and navies of other powers,
was exclusively a weapon of defence. The powers had therefore
no reason to object to the supremacy of the British fleet, since it
policed the seas without detriment to the liberty of any nation.
The contention was ludicrous. Obviously a maritime blockade
violated the independence of the nation blockaded as gravely as
an invasion. 2 And at that very moment the Admiralty was con
templating the day when by transporting an expeditionary force
to the coast of France, Belgium, or even Germany, it would take
a direct part in an offensive. But the argument was seductive. It
became a commonplace of the Press and Parliament.
The manifesto therefore which the Government published in
the Nation was not a masterpiece of Machiavellian cunning but
an attempt to compromise between two conflicting forces which
confronted each other in England or perhaps, to speak more
1
H. of C., May 9, -1906: . . . We
ought ... to have ... a Fleet which would make us
absolutely secure against any possible combination against our shores. Is there anything
aggressive in that policy? . .Our Fleet is for defensive purposes and their fleet, (the navy
.
of certain foreign powers) is not for defensive purposes alone [Why not?] Because
their shores are unassailable, partly for geographical reasons and partly for the reason that
they have great land armies which would make invasion by any Maritime Power abso
lutely ludicrous and futile* (ibid., vol. clvi, p. 410). Even an organ of such strong pacifist
convictions as the Nation was compelled to write, if it would keep its readers* sympathies:
Nothing could be more damaging to our influence as a Liberal Power or more threatening
to our naval supremacy than to associate that supremacy with abuses like the destruction of
innocent merchant ships and the bombardment of defenceless towns* (July 6, 1907).
2
See the instructions given by Grey himself to Sir Edward Fry, the head of the British
delegation at The Hague: . . The proportion between the British Army and
.
the Great
Continental Armies has come to be such that the British Army, if operating alone, could
not be regarded as a means of offence against the mainland of a Great Continental Power.
For her ability to bring pressure to bear upon.her enemies in war Great Britain has there
fore to rely on the navy alone. The Government cannot agree to any resolution which
would diminish the effective means which the navy has of bringing pressure to bear upon
an enemy/
223
accurately, in the minds of many Englishmen. To satisfy one of

these the Government said: We will ask at the Hague for meas
ures of disarmament/ To satisfy the other it added immediately:
But they must not endanger the nation s safety or sea power.
The Sea Lords were told Give up your demand for three Dread
:
noughts, be content with only two/ But the Government added:

The concession we are asking you to make is after all, conditional.
Conference does not produce practical measures of general
If the
disarmament you shall have your third Dreadnought/ And the

Sea Lords could accept the compromise, the more readily because
they were certain the Conference would fail. But what English
man expected it to succeed? What Englishman witnessed its open
ing or followed its
proceedings without marked dissatisfaction?
The advanced Liberals, partisans
of a reconciliation between
England and Germany, were quick to perceive that the English

proposals were diametrically opposed to their desires and calcu
lated to lead directly to a conict between the two nations. And
the Foreign Office reached the same unfavourable conclusion
though for different reasons. For many years it had worked hard
to establishgood relations between England and
all the
foreign
nations in order to defeat the opposite policy pursued by the
German Emperor, who had hoped to lead Europe against England.
By of disarmament, indeed by simply going
raising the question
to the Hague, England ran the risk of once more reuniting
Europe against her and enabling German policy to score a success.
At the Hague the same ritual was observed as in 1898. The

international propagandists of the pacifist creed flocked to the
Conference. W. T. Stead a friend, moreover, of Admiral
Fisher was at their head. He
passed to and fro between London
and the Hague, visiting London to rouse the English Government
from its lethargy, and returning to the Hague to edit the Courier
organ of the Conference through
de la Conference, the unofficial
out its sessions. We
can judge of the spirit which animated the
various delegations from our
knowledge of the attitude of the
ilers and statesmen who sent them to the
Hague. The three
rl
224
Emperors were opposed even to the meeting of the Conference

and their hostility increased when they saw on its programme the
disarmament which they regarded as a craze of Jews, Socialists,
and hysterical women. 1 The King of England had confided to
William II that he regarded the Conference as *a humbug 2 .
3
President Roosevelt was sceptical and brought forward a scheme
for disarmament it limited neither the expenditure on navies
4
nor the number of vessels, but merely their size which seemed
devised as a counterblast to the plans of the British Admiralty.
And the French Government had waited, before publicly declar
ing itself opposed to the discussion of disarmament, only
until
Prince von Biilow in measured but vigorous language had defen

ded the German Government s opposition to the proposal. Baron
Marschall, the head of the German delegation, felt himself there
fore on this crucial point in agreement with every foreign office
in the world, not even perhaps excepting the British. For in his
interviews with Metternich, Grey seems to have had no other
purpose than to minimize, he could, the bad impression

as far as
in the entire Continent by

Germany and throughout
produced
a proposal for which he was responsible only as a member of the
Cabinet. 5 The German delegates intended to withdraw if the
1
Isvolsky s words reported by Von SchSn in a telegram of March 18, 1907 (Die Grosse
1
Politik, vol. xxiii , p. 163).
2
Letter from the Emperor William to President Roosevelt, communicated by Von
1
Btilow to the German Ambassador at Washington, January 5, 1907 (ibid., vol. xxiii p. 93). ,
3
Roosevelt to Henry White, August 14, 1906 (Allan Nevins, Henry White: Thirty
Years of American Diplomacy, 1930, p. 498). See further Roosevelt s words reported to
Edward VII by Count Gleichen, August 31, 1906: Tell Lord Grey and Haldane [he
. . .
meant of course Sir Edward Grey] not to let themselves be carried away by sentimental
ideas at the Hague Conference. Wars are not to be conducted on sentimental principles,
and I m afraid from what I see and hear, they may let themselves be swayed by their party
in that direction against their own conviction but don t let them do it (Sir Sidney
. . .
Lee, King Edward VII... vol. ii, p. 437).

4
Von Tschirschky to Von Tirpitz, September 7, 1906 (Die Crosse Politik, vol. xxiii,
pp. 88-9). Baron Speck von Stemburg
to the Minister for Foreign Affairs, January 4, 1907
1
(ibid., vol. xxiii pp. 91-2) the same to the same, January 6, 1907 (ibid., pp. 94-5).
,
6
Von Stumm to Prince von Btilow, March 8, 1907 "Count Bosdari" (who had sub
: . . .
mitted to Grey a proposal by Tittoni) received the impression that he did not intend to
. . .
examine it and he does not believe that the British Government is in earnest with its
policy of disarmament. On the contrary,
in his opinion the Government only desires to
make a good impression on Parliament and the nation and has no intention of bringing
forward any concrete proposals Sir Charles Hardinge told me a little while ago in the
course of a conversation in which we touched upon the question of disarmament that he
had repeatedly impressed upon the Liberal idealists who attach such weight to it that
under present circumstances the discussion of the question would achieve no practical
results. He expressed the opinion that the subject was arousing too much excitement, that
divergent standpoints should be given a calm hearing

and if no agreement were reached,
1
the failure should not be taken too much to heart (Die Grosse Politik, vol. xxiii , pp. 206-7).
225
question of disarmament was discussed. But the Conference was

content to adopt unanimously and without debate a colourless
resolution affirming the desirability of disarmament which simply
reiterated in slightly stronger terms the resolution adopted in 1908,
The matter was disposed of at a single sitting. The real work of
the Conference, which lasted from June 15 to October 18, dealt
with a number of questions of a more legal character. In the first
place there was the development of international arbitration,

possibly the institution of compulsory arbitration. For the past
year the English Conservatives had urged that this should be the
leading issue at the Conference. The Government, after some
hesitation it would seem, adopted their point of view. It was in
harmony with the views of the French delegation which already
Conference had pursued the same policy. But here the
at the first
opposition of Germany stood in the way and nothing

came of the
attempt except a lengthy declaration of principle which the
Germans had no difficulty in accepting for, as the head of
their delegation said, it would be difficult to
say less in more
words .
The important question remained of belligerents rights at sea.

Neutrals continued to demand, as they had always demanded, the
abolition of the right of capture, freedom of the seas; and the
United States of America, which had no conception that the day
would come when its
navy would take part in a European war,
espoused their cause. The American delegation proposed to place
very severe restrictions upon the right to capture neutral vessels in
time of war, and the German Government, brushing aside Tir~
pitz s opposition, cleverly

declared in favour of the proposal. It
was indeed rejected. But it made it easier for Germany to join with
America and France in opposing an English resolution of a plainly
character demanding the complete abolition of contra
pacifist
band of war. Though the proposal was accompanied by reserva-
4
The same to the same, April 20, 1907, report of a conversation with Grey: . . I was
(I .
told him) fully convinced that the English idealists who champion disarmament were
inspired by the best and most honourable intentions. They were not however practical
politicians me whether it was his personal belief that on this question
and 1 asked him to tell
the Conference would achieve any positive result. It testifies to his honour and frankness
that he shrank from an affirmative answer and refused to reply. And he concludes:
. . .
I have no doubt that the Government itself does not believe that in this matter the Con
ference can achieve any practical result. That in spite of this it persists in its intention is to
be explained by reasons of domestic policy. There is in humble opinion no reason to
my
believe that the British Government entertains any sinister designs, in particular against
1
Germany (Die Grosse Politik, vol. xxiii , pp. 215-16).
226
tions which rendered it suspect in certain
quarters, England had
the small powers on her side that
day. But when she raised the
all
question of floating mines and championed what was obviously

the humanitarian point of view, she
again seemed to the weak
nations, for whom
the floating mine was their
only weapon
against British domination at sea, to be defending brazenly her
own interests. Finally, a complicated resolution was adopted
which in theory slightly restricted the use of
floating mines. On
the question of the right of
capture it was Germany that took the
-
initiative by proposing that an international court should be set
up to decide all
disputed questions of contraband in time of war.
On the main issues, the final decisions were left to a committee of
experts which met in London at the beginning of 1908 and whose

work led to the declaration of London of 26, 1909,
February
which restricted of blockade and the application
severely the right
of the doctrine of continuous voyage and limited contraband of
war to a small category of merchandise of an obviously military
character. Throughout the discussions, too incoherent and vague
to hold the attention of the
public, the British press without dis
tinction of party protested against the combination of timidity
and bungling displayed by the British delegation. Lord Reay, an
eminent lawyer and a member of the delegation, bombarded the
Prime Minister with his complaints. He protested against the
instructions he received from the Admiralty which compelled
him to speak against his conscience. 1 The vagueness and incoher
ence of the discussions turned to the advantage of Germany. At
the Hague she was no longer an isolated country against which the
entire world was conspiring. By proposing an international prize
court the nation whose delegates cynically paraded their contempt
for the illusions of pacifism contrived to take control of the pro
ceedings. This success compensated the Emperor William for the

blow to his prestige he had suffered by the conclusion of the
Anglo-Russian agreement. Three weeks after the Conference
closed he arrived at Windsor. His visit in October 1902 had been
his last visit during the period of friendship. This was the first
during the period of enmity.
r
j. A. Spender, The Life of the Right Hon., Sir Henry Campbell-Bannertnaii, vol. ii,
P- 333-
227
The visit had been preceded by complicated negotiations. King

Edward s invitation had been given as early as June 14. It had at
firstbeen coldly received, following as it did the conclusion of the
Mediterranean agreement. Fisher had made the situation worse by
offering to put himself personally at the Emperor s service while
he was the guest of the British nation. This offer of the English *
Admiral aroused suspicion at Berlin. What if the invitation had

originated with Fisher, who wished to humiliate the Emperor
by making him visit the King of England before the King visited
him? To reassure the German Government on this point King
Edward during his stay at Carlsbad paid a visit to his nephew,
who was in the neighbourhood. Then the Emperor announced
his intention to come escorted by a squadron, and when per
suaded to abandon his intention refused to come at all. Then he
wanted to bring his Chancellor with him. A violent attack on
Billow s policy which appeared in The Times of October 10 may
have contributed to make him abandon the idea. He was accom
panied only by his Minister for Foreign Affairs, Von Schon. The
Liberal press gave him an enthusiastic welcome, the attitude of
the Unionist press, in obedience to the wishes of the Court, was
correct and even courteous. He was cheered in the London streets
and at the Guildhall where he made a pacific speech. When his
visit to Windsor was over he spent a few weeks on an unofficial
visit to a friend, and did not leave for Germany until December
1 1 after spending a month in England. 1
While the Emperor was his uncle s guest many British states
men who had never met him were delighted at this opportunity
to see and converse with a man whom the accident of birth had
placed in so formidable a position, and he won their good opinion

by and easy manner. The Bagdad railway was discussed
his jovial
and his attitude seemed conciliatory. But the question of the navy,
the only burning question, was carefully avoided, and while the
1
For the incidents connected with the preparations for this visit and the visit itself see
from the English Documents, vol. vi, pp. 78 sqq. ; from the German, Die Grosse
side, British
Politik, vol. xxiv, pp. 15 sqq. See also R.. B. Haldane, Before the War, 1920, pp. 42 sqq.;
An Autobiography i 1929, pp. 289 sqq.; John Viscount Morley, Recollections, vol. ii, pp.
237-8; and John Morley to Bryce (H. A. L, Fisher, James Bryce, Viscount Bryce ofDechmont,
vol. ii, p. 92).
228
Emperor was actually in England the German Government laid
before the Reichstag its naval estimates for the coming year.
Apparently they did not exceed- the provisions laid down by the
law of 1900. But it was decided to reduce the life of vessels of the
line from twenty-five to twenty years. This would hasten by one-
fifth the rate of replacement and therefore the tempo of naval
construction. Every year from 1908 to 1911 four large ironclads
were to be laid down. And at the same time it was provided that
all vessels of the line to be built in future would
possess a larger
tonnage than in the past, in other words would be Dreadnoughts
that isto say, the British Admiralty was already ceasing to profit
by the confusion into which other navies had been thrown by the
launching of the first of these giants. From now onwards both
nations were doomed and ruin each other in the battle
to fight
of Dreadnoughts. After two years of Liberal government
England had taken a step forward not towards peace but towards
war.
Three months later an incident unimportant in itself but
serious on account of the violent feeling it aroused revealed
how intense was the hatred of Germany which prevailed in
political circles.
On March 6, 1908, a short letter appeared in The Times headed
/Under Which King? that is to say Under which monarch are
we living?The King of England? or the King of Prussia? The
letter informed its readers that the German Emperor had sent a
letter to Lord Tweedmouth, the First Lord of the Admiralty,
which amounted to an endeavour to influence, in the interests
of Germany, the Minister responsible for the navy estimates It .
fact written a long letter to

appeared that the Emperor had in
Lord Tweedmouth, couched in familiar and even bantering
terms, intended to allay the alarm caused in England by the
growth of the German fleet and that he had sent a courteous reply
in which he communicated to the Emperor as a token of confi
dence and friendship the details of the forthcoming estimates, as
yet unknown to Parliament. What
was the source of the leakage?
The War Office? The letter in The Times bore the signature of its
military correspondent, Colonel Repington,
whose relations with
the War Office we already know. The Admiralty? It was a hot
bed of intrigue. The Court, King Edward s entourage? The
Emperor s letter contained sarcastic remarks about Lord Esher,
229
theKing s intimate friend, which made its publication impossible,
and we now know that William II received at the same time as
Lord Tweedmouth s reply a very strongly worded letter from
King Edward protesting against the breach of diplomatic usage
committed by addressing the letter to one of his ministers and not
to himself. In fact, from the explanations given in Parliament it
transpired that immediately on the receipt of the imperial letter

Lord Tweedmouth had communicated it to his colleagues and
drawn up his reply with their approval. And finally it is possible
that in giving the Emperor this information he was acting in
accordance with Grey s wishes. For the British Government had
suggested the previous summer that a mutual exchange between
the powers of information as to their respective estimates might
be a means of bridging over the naval conflict between the two
nations and had empowered Sir Edward to make a proposal to
that effect at the Hague, which however gained little support. 1
The press with few exceptions did nothing to inflame public feel
ing, the leaders of the Opposition in both Houses made no use of
the incident against the Government, and Lord Rosebery even
took the opportunity to congratulate himself publicly on having
foreseen the dangerous consequences of the entente cordiale*
But Colonel Repington s blow had gone home. Lord Tweed-
mouth s position had been too severely shaken. It was obvious
that he would be obliged to leave the Admiralty at the first
opportunity.
10
It was not long delayed. When Colonel

Repington s article
appeared, for a month past the Prime Minister had ceased to take
part in the debates in the House of Commons. Seventy-two years
old, suffering from a severe disease of the heart, and deeply afflic
ted by the recent death of a wife whomhe fondly loved, the old
Parliamentarian could no longer cope with his crushing task. A
nation naturally kindly and courteous sympathized with his
sufferings without distinction of political views and they increased
1
August The Manchester Guardian (August 19) regretted the failure of a pro
17, 1907.
posal whose adoption would have made possible private negotiations between the Powers,
for
a
example, between Germany and England.
H. of L., March 9, 1908 (Parliamentary Debates, 4th Series, vol. cboocv, pp. 1075-7).
230
his popularity. But it had indeed increased
steadily since that day
at the end of 1905 when he had insisted on Prime Minister,
being
and not in name alone. The members of the Labour party liked
him. They did not forget how on the question of the Trade Dis
putes Bill of 1906 he had had the courage to outstrip his party
which otherwise would probably have been compelled to yield
their demands with a bad
grace, and make them his own, their
victory his. The Irish did not forget that after the defeat of the
Irish Council Bill he had made it clear that he bore them no
grudge for their refusal to accept a compromise, and so far as he

was concerned was desirous to grant diem far more extensive
concessions as soon as circumstances permitted. To the advanced
Liberals, the pro-Boers of yesterday, he had given their revenge,
which surely was at the same time his personal revenge, by grant
ing representative government to the Transvaal and Orange
River Colony. The moderate Liberals and the imperialists might
well have taken offence at this thoroughgoing Liberalism. This
was not the case. The moderates felt that he was at bottom one of
themselves and on the question of the Education Bill his sceptical
attitude had brought him close to the Archbishop of Canterbury,
another man of moderation, and enabled them to work together
in a sincere attempt to discover a compromise. And the imperial
ists were
grateful for an indolence which enabled the Foreign
Office, the War Office, and the Admiralty to pursue their policy
under the cloak of a kindliness which reassured the Premier s
pacifist friends. And lastly King Edward, who had never liked
Balfour, who, he felt, despised him, had soon learnt to appreciate
his successor s geniality. C-B it was the name
by which the
Premier was customarily spoken of in Parliament and the familiar
designation proved at once the extent and character of his popu
larity had come to be widely regarded as the only leader capable
of holding together that bundle of conflicting tendencies which
now constituted the Liberal party.
When the term had been originally created, Liberal had
meant hostile to the state in every form, to the Socialist state and
the militarist state alike*. Now, however, a Liberal was obliged
to pose as the champion, more or less advanced, of social demo
cracy, and at the same time, if he wished to govern the country,

could not escape the necessity of piling up armaments both by
land and sea. Confronted with two tendencies, neither of wlf
231
was distinctively Liberal ,
the party which had obtained office
under that label was faced with the problem of choosing between
them or harmonizing both. It was a difficult but urgent task and
C
the venerable C-B did not preside over its fulfilment. On April
6, only a fortnight before his death, he resigned to make way for
the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Henry Asquith, whom public
opinion designated as his successor.
232
PART II
FOUR YEARS OF CRISIS

CHAPTER I
Winston Churchill and Lloyd George

I CHURCHILL AT THE BOARD OF TRADE
i
ASQUITH succeeded SirHenry Campbell-

Bannerman as Prime Minister. Itwas a victory for the
HENRY Liberal imperialists. Already at the end of 1905 they had
attempted to secure the leadership of the Commons for Asquith
and force Campbell-Bannerman to enter the Lords. Now an
accident had achieved their object. Asquith held the coveted post
and Campbell-Bannerman had been got rid of more completely
than they had dared to hope. The Conservatives were delighted:
Grey s anti-German policy was assured in future of the Prime
Minister s support. On the other hand, Asquith s promotion does
not seem to have aroused much protest from the Radical pacifists.
By his tact and conciliatory temper he had won the confidence of
the entire party. Even with Campbell-Bannerman after the
original disagreement he was soon on excellent terms. And in any

case what was the use of resisting the inevitable? Asquith had
hardly entered Parliament when his talents pointed him out to

everyone as a future minister; he had hardly become a minister,
when everyone hailed in him a future premier. His early educa
tion and his temperament had invested him with the indispensable
gravity. His second marriage, when his first wife had left him the
father of several children, to a young and brilliant madcap had
introduced him to fashionable society and made his talents human.
He was a man of sound judgment who lacked the flame heavenly
or demonic of genius. 1 Were not other qualities required if the
its almost
Liberal party after portentous victory at the polls in
January 1906 was to retain the ardour which alone could win new
victories? And was it not obvious at the beginning of 1908 that
the Liberal Government would be exposed to serious dangers,
1
Biographies of Asquith: J. P. Alderson, Mr, Asqitith, 1906. Frank Elias, The Right Hon.
H. H. Asquith: A Biography and Appreciation, 1909, And more particularly: J. A. Spender
and Cyril Asquith, Life of Herbert Henry Asquith, Lord Oxford and Asquith, 1932. His own
works: Tlie Genesis of the War, 1923; Fifty Years of Parliament, 1926; Memories and Reflec
1928, are of poor quality, hastily put together and (especially the two latter) very
tions,-
uniforming. Contemporary French portraits: Jacques Bardoux, Silhouettes d* Outre-

Manche, 1909, pp. 82 sqq.; Augustan Filon, L Angleterre d Edouard VII, 1911, pp. 97 $qq.;
Princess Bibesco, Portraits d Hommes, 1929, pp. 91 sqq.
235
WINSTON CHURCHILL AND LLOYD GEORGE
unless it could find
by the side of Asquith and in his Cabinet an
eager and enterprising spirit to play the part Canning had once
played beside Lord Liverpool and more recently Chamberlain
beside Lord Salisbury, one day perhaps to supplant him and be
come Prime Minister in his stead?
The changes which were effected in the Cabinet after Campbell-
Bannerman s death will perhaps help us to guess the quarter in
which he was to be sought. If at the Board of Education Walter
Runciman replaced Reginald McKenna and McKenna in turn
took the place at the Admiralty of Lord Tweedmouth, who
could no longer remain there after the incident of his correspon
dence with William II, and Lord Crewe succeeded, Lord Elgin at
the Colonial Office, these changes did not interest the public. But
Asquith, now First Lord of the Treasury and Prime Minister, was
no longer Chancellor of the Exchequer and Lloyd George took
his
place. He therefore left the Board of Trade, where he was
succeeded by Winston Churchill, hitherto Under-Secretary of
State for the Colonies. It was on these two men that the eyes of
the public were fixed. Asquith, Premier at fifty-six, embodied
the present; Lloyd George and Churchill, respectively forty-five
thirty-four, were the men of to-morrow. They were united
1
and
by close ties of friendship. Both were opposed to a policy of
heavy expenditure on the army and navy, both advocates of a

policy of social reform which, they maintained, the Liberal party
1
Biographies of Lloyd George: John Hugh Edwards and Spencer Leigh Hughes,
From Village Green to Downing Street: The Life of the Right Hon. D. Lloyd George, M.P.,
1908 John Hugh Edwards, The Life of David Lloyd George, with a short History of the Welsh
;
People, 4 vols, 1913-1918 (with a supplementary volume by J. Saxon Mills, entitled: David
Lloyd George, War Minister) (the writer was a Welsh M.P. who composed a panegyric,
but a panegyric which is well documented) ; J. Hugh Edwards, David Lloyd George the
Man and the Statesman, 2 vols., 1925 (an abridgment of the previous work); Hubert Du
Parcq,Lt/e of David Lloyd George, 4 vols. (the fourth is a collection of speeches), 1912, well
documented, since the author makes use of the diary and notes of Lloyd George s brother;
Harold Spender, The Prime Minister, 1920 (the work of a political and personal friend) ;
W. F. Rook, Mr. Lloyd George and the War, 1920; alsoE. T. Raymond, Mr. Lloyd George:
A Biography, 1922 (more critical than the preceding works and of considerable interest.
For impressions of his personality see the French contemporary portraits by Jacques Bar-
doux, Silhouettes d Outre-Manche, 1909, pp. 58 sqq.; and Augustin Filon, UAngleterre
PEdouard VII, 1911, pp. 199 sqq.
Biographies of Winston Churchill. See in the first place for his childhood and youth his
own autobiography entitled My Early Life, a Roving Commission, 1930; his work entitled
The World Crisis, 1911-i4, to a great extent autobiographical, is practically confined to the
preparations for war. The two excellent works by A. MacCullum Scott, Winston Spencer
Churchill, 1905, and Winston Churchill in Peace and War, 1916, say nothing of Churchill s
activities in the interval between his youth and his years at the War Office. There is. the
same lacuna in Ephesian s Winston Churchill, being an account of the life of, 1927. For a con
temporary sketch, see the above-mentioned work ofJacques Bardoux, pp. 137 sqq.
236
CHURCHILL AT THE BOARD OF TRADE
must pursue with an unprecedented daring, if the Labour party
were not to grow stronger on its left. They came forward as the
two leaders of the Radical group of pacifists and advanced social
reformers as opposed to the three imperialists Asquith, Grey, and
Haldane that is to say, they were two friends professing the
same political creed but for that very reason rivals as well as
friends. They were obviously too ambitious to be satisfied for
ever with a second place. Which of the two would reach the first?
Churchill had the advantage of youth. If Lloyd George was
eleven years younger than Asquith, he was eleven years younger
than Lloyd George. He had the further advantage of aristocratic
birth. He was the son of a junior member of a noble family, and
grandson of a Duke of Marlborough. That surely still counted for

something in England. In turn soldier, journalist, and politician,
he won admiration not only by the diversity of his interests but
by his biting eloquence and genuine gift of oratory. He had
honoured the memory of his father Lord Randolph Churchill by
an excellent biography which was almost a masterpiece, and it
was the dream formed for him by an ambitious mother and his
own to succeed where his father had failed and since his father had
been unable to regenerate the Tory party by making it demo
cratic, one day perhaps to lead the democratic party against the
Tories.
But, on the other hand, it was to the advantage of Lloyd George
juncture when the Liberal party was seeking a new leader
at this
that he was not quite so young as Churchill. Since he was in his
fortieshe had reached that maturity which is ripe for great per
formance while as yet untouched by fatigue and old age. He
lacked Winston s culture but his genius was at least equal, and
possibly it was beginning to be realized that in one respect
the
election of 1906 had marked an epoch in the social history of
England. She had dismissed her ancient aristocracy. It might con

tinue to exercise its ceremonial functions, but the country no
longer wished to be governed by it and Lloyd George s bourgeois

career and plebeian origin were a point in his favour. And he
possessed yet another advantage. Churchill was the object

of all
the bitterness and hostility which are the lot of a deserter from the
aristocracy. Some refused to forgive his
defection. Others felt
uneasy in the company of this new friend, who styled himself a

he had fame on the battlefields of South
pacifist though sought
237
Africa and who at bottom seemed to have given up his true career,
that of a soldier, only because even a military career was too
commonplace, too monotonous to satisfy his craving for adven
ture.Lloyd George on the contrary, ever since he entered Parlia
ment, had pledged himself so deeply to Radicalism that his eleva
tion to the Exchequer could not fail to delight all the enemies of
Imperialism. Moreover at the Board of Trade he had reassured

the world of business and the employers generally by the spirit
of conciliation he displayed on so many occasions. Therefore
when Churchill and Lloyd George went respectively to the
Board of Trade and the Exchequer, everyone distrusted the
former, everyone entertained hopes of the latter.
When Churchill took over the Board of Trade he is reported

to have said: This cake has been given me too late; Lloyd George
has taken all the plums/ If the story is true, he was no doubt
thinking of the two Statutes on Merchant Shipping and Patents

which had won the unanimous approval of the public, and those
clever arbitrations which had presented Lloyd George as the
peacemaker who saved the country from social war. What was
there left for Churchill to do? The Cabinet had not indeed waited
for the April changes to perceive the necessity of doing something
to satisfy the claims of Labour and had introduced in February a
Bill establishingan eight-hours day in the coal mines. But the
mines were under the jurisdiction of the Home Office, not the
Board of Trade, and it was Herbert Gladstone, the Home Secre
tary, who took charge of the Bill. As it is one of the three impor
tant measures of social reform passed by Parliament during the
two sessions of 1908 and 1909 we must say something about it.
Moreover Churchill played his part in the chequered incidents
which attended its passing and application.
The demand for the legal restriction of the day s work in
mines to eight hours went back not only in England but in the
Continental countries to the closing years of the nineteenth cen
tury. Whyin the mines rather than in any other branch of indus
try ? Was it that humanitarian sentiment pitied more than the lot
of other workers the miner s hard life in subterranean darkness?
238
CHURCHILL AT THB BOARD OF TRADE
It may have been But
the labour of metal workers and glass
so.
makers is hard and unpleasant as the miners under

certainly as
ground labour, and the real reason why public opinion began to
entertain the notion of limiting the hours of adult miners was that
they were in a better position to make themselves heard. Around

the mines particularly the collieries vast settlements had grown
up, extremely homogeneous in their population, veritable repub

lics which soon discovered their
power to send representatives of
their class to Parliament to defend their interests there.
1
When in
1874 the two members of the working class entered Parlia
first
ment, they were two miners. The great Keir Hardie was a miner
elected in 1906 by a mining constituency. At the same election
two other miners had been returned as candidates of the Labour
Representation Committee. Thirteen others had entered West
minster with no other aid than that of their trade union and two
years had passed before they amalgamated with the Labour party.
Already, before die Imperialists came into office in 1895, the
House of Commons under a Liberal Government had twice
2
affirmed the principle of an eight-hours day in the mines. But
it was not until 1906 that the
question could be considered ripe
for solution. Till then the eight-hours day had not received the
miners unanimous support. In Durham and Northumberland the
work was so arranged that adults worked only six and a half
hours, children over eight hours. The miners were afraid that if
the children s day was reduced to eight hours the adults day
might be lengthened. Moreover, the miners claim seemed exclu
sively and selfishly professional. If the reduction of hours
led to a
decrease in output and in consequence to a rise in the price of coal
it was a
prospect which the miners appeared to contemplate
with
equanimity, even perhaps with pleasure, provided their wages
were increased, but a prospect calculated to alarm the general
1 *There is so
hardly another industry in which the actual conditions of production
readily provide the basis for a democratic trade union machine. The miner not only
works
in the pit; he lives in the pit village, and all his immediate interests are thus concentrated
at one point. . . The miners* intense solidarity and loyalty to their Unions is undoubtedly
.
the result of. the conditions under which they work and live. They are isolated from the
rest of the world even the rest of the Trade Union world; but their isolation ministers to
their own self-sufficiency and loyalty one to another. They are narrow, and slow to under
stand others, or to feel the influence of outside public opinion. They have little skill in
arguing their case before others; but they stick together (G. D. M. Cole, Labour
on the
Coal Mining Industry, i914~i921 t 1923, p. 7).
2
H. of C, May 3, 1893 (Parliamentary Debates, 4th Series, vol. xi, pp. 1841 sqq.); April
25, 1894 (ibid., vol. xxiii, pp. 1329 sqq.).
public and the great mass of labour. But

these conflicts of interest
which divided different branches of industry were, so to speak,
swallowed up in the great movement of working-class solidarity
which in January 1906 won so many victories for Labour. The
miners of Northumberland and Durham accepted the programme
of the eight-hours day, and in 1908 joined the great Miners
Federation. And all the workers without distinction of trade sup
ported the miners claims. In their eyes the enactment of the

eight-hours day meant theacceptance by the British law of the
principle, hitherto unrecognized,
of legal limitation of adult
labour, and would involve at no great distance of time a statutory
limitation of hours for all adult workers in accordance with the
programme of the Second International in support of which all
the workers of Western Europe demonstrated every first of May.

In 1906 the Cabinet, still timid, refused to commit itself until
the question had been examined by a Committee of Inquiry, In
1907 it introduced a Bill establishing the eight-hours day in the
mines but was unwilling to carry it any further. The report of
the Committee had been published and no doubt the Govern
ment hoped it would discourage the advocates of the Reform, for
without explicitly condemning the principle of the eight-hours
day, it pointed out the numerous difficulties in the way of its
application. The average actual length of the working day in
Great Britain was nine hours and three minutes. To reduce it to
eight hours would reduce the output by 10.27 per cent that
isto
say,
there would be a decrease of 25,783,000 tons on the
output of 1906. The experts, admitted that by increasing

it is true,
the number of men, reducing number of holidays, and im
the
proving the machinery, the loss could be partly made good. But
they doubted whether the change would be as beneficial as was
supposed to the miner s health. It was excellent already. In their
opinion, the length of the working day and the nature of the work
performed varied so much according to
locality that it would be
impossible to apply a uniform rule. In
any case the output would
be diminished, and the price of coal would rise. Those countries
in which the working day had been already reduced France,
Holland, and Austria were not serious competitors with
England, but the experts doubted whether under the system of
the eight-hours day the French collieries would be able to over
come the competition of Germany and America, two countries
240
in which there was no legal restriction of hours and in
which the
working day, at would be
present shorter than in Great Britain,
longer if the eight-hours day were adopted. Moreover the effect
of a the cost of coal, difficult to estimate but
rise in
undoubtedly
very considerable, upon all branches of national industry must
be taken into account. 1
What of this? The pressure of labour was irresistible. Neither
the Liberals, afraid of strengthening the Labour
party, nor the
Unionists, afraid of strengthening the Liberals, could resist it. It
was in vain that a League of Coal Consumers was formed to
organize opposition to the change. For these consumers were
not the host of small buyers, but a small group of large purchasers,
railway companies and industrial magnates. The opposite side
disposed of more formidable weapons. If this Bill is not to be
passed, declared Herbert Samuel, and if the miners are to be left
to their own devices and to the strength of their own organiza
2
tion, it means a coal strike, and nothing else/ It was all very well
for Opposition speakers to declare it scandalous for a member of
the Government to make such a statement; Lord Lansdowne in
3
language slightly more veiled said the same thing when he urged
the Lords to pass the Bill which the Commons had sent up to it
and which actually became law on December 2i. 4 The Bill did
not indeed give full satisfaction to Even in
the workers claims.
its
original form not only did it empower the Government to
suspend its operation in the event of war or of imminent national
danger, or in the event of any grave economic disturbance due
to the demand for coal exceeding the supply available and ex ,
clude from its scope certain classes of workmen (whose working

day might extend to nine hours and a half), but it also excluded
from the reckoning of the eight hours one of the two journeys
made by the miners between the surface and the bottom of the
pit and gave the coalowners the right to impose on their men
an
hour s extra work for a maximum period of sixty days a year.
1
Miners Eight-Hour Day Committee. First Report of the Departmental Committee appointed
Economic Effect of a limit of Eight Hours to the Working Day of Coal
to inquire into the probable
Miners, March 23, 1907. Minutes of Evidence Final Report Report (May 15, 1907) and
Appendices. Minutes of Evidence and Index.
2
H. of C.July 6, 1908 (Parliamentary Debates, 4th Series, vol. cxci, p. 1279).
3
H. of L., December 15, 1908 (ibid., vol. cxcviii, p. 1461).
4
8 Edw., 7 Cap. 57: An Act to amend the Coal Mines Regulation Acts 1887 to 1905,
for the purpose of limiting hours of work below the ground (Coal Mines Regulation Act,
1908).
241
And other concessions were made in the course of debate. Though
the new law was to come into
operation on July i, 1909, in the
mines of Northumberland and Durham the date would be post
poned for another six months. And both journeys, from the
surface to the bottom of the pit
and back to the surface, were
excluded from the reckoning of the eight hoursoriginally for a
period of five years, finally, in virtue of an amendment introduced

in the Lords, in
perpetuity. But all this did not alter the fact that
for the time an important principle had been accepted by
first
British legislation, the principle of legal restriction of the

working
day for all workers and not, as hitherto, only for women and
children.
The Act passed,
it remained to
put it into operation and the
involved immediately became evident. South Wales
difficulties
was one of the coalfields in which the hours of work had been
particularly long and the Committee of Inquiry had pointed out
that it would be difficult to introduce the eight-hours day in the
Welsh collieries without dislocating the eiitire
industry. And the
difficulty was even greater in 1909, a year of industrial depression,

than it had been in the early part of 1907 when the Committee
drew up its
report. The mineowners declared that they regarded
the wages agreement as automatically cancelled by the legal insti
tution of the eight-hours day and attempted to take immediate
advantage of the clause permitting sixty nine-hour days a year

and to introduce the system of double shifts. On all these points
they were faced by the opposition of the miners, supported by
the Miners Federation of Great Britain. The Federation threat
ened to general strike of miners if the Welsh coalowners did
call a
not give way. At the last moment the dispute was settled by
shelving the points at issue and the eight-hours day came peace
ably into operation on July ist.
It was in Scotland that further difficulties arose. Here, as in

South Wales, the coalowners considered the wages agreement
cancelled by their obligation to reduce, the hours of work. The
miners on their part refused to accept any reduction of their
wages below the minimum fixed by existing agreements. As in
242
Wales they had the support of the National Federation, which
secured a vote from its members in favour of a general strike in
the mines to support the Scottish miners claims. that the Now
question of a maximum working day had been settled by law,
the question of a minimum wage was raised. Churchill intervened
and confronted at the Board of Trade the representatives of the
owners and men, saying that if nothing else could be done, the
Government would have to pass an Act of Parliament in twenty-
four hours referring the dispute to compulsory arbitration. "Mr.
Churchill," replied one of the miners, "you cannot put 600,000
men into prison."

51
A
compromise was arranged. The owners
conceded the minimum wage for which the men were asking,
the miners a modification of the sliding scale to the owners
advantage.
This was by no means the end of the conflicts occasioned by the
introduction into the mines of the eight-hours day. We
shall have
to follow later on the course of a very serious struggle. But for the
moment everything passed without a hitch. And the new Presi
dent of the Board of Trade could congratulate himself on having,
like his predecessor, had his own labour dispute to settle and hav
ing settled it with equal success. In fact the disputes

which had
broken out among the engineers of the north and which Lloyd
George had apparently smoothed out continued and it was
Churchill who June and again in September had the honour
in
of effecting the final settlement. But his ambition was not con
tent with the role of an arbitrator. It aimed higher, as he made
clear to Parliament in the speech he delivered in the Commons
on the Eight-Hours Bill, the only speech by a member of the
Cabinet which aroused the enthusiasm of the House and of the
Labour members in particular. What the workers demand, he
said, is not less work but more leisure. They would
no longer be
content with an existence which condemned them day after day
to go from bed to the mill, from the mill back to bed. They
wanted time to think and read and cultivate their gardens The .
claim did not surprise him; what filled him with amazement was
the gentlemen in the silk hat and white waistcoat who had the
to
coolness, the calmness, the composure, and the complacency
ignore the existence of the need. Why, it was asked, stop at
* . .
the mines? But who had ever said that they ought to stop at the
1 and Disputes, p. 131.
Lord Askwith, Industrial Problems
243
mines? For himself, he regarded the Bill as simply the precursor
of the general movement which is in progress all over the world,
and in other industries besides this, towards a reconciling of the
conditions of labour with the well ascertained laws of science and
health.
1
he uttered these words he was no doubt already
When
thinking of the Bill
he would introduce the following year to fix
legally
no longer hours of work but wages.
Within the working class a

species
of hierarchy could be distin
of three classes. At the top was a class of skilled

guished, consisting
labourers whose skill required a long apprenticeship. Their labour
was fixed and they were congregated in large factories and urban
centres. They naturally tended to form powerful unions capable
of a to the employers claims. The

permanent
offering opposition
miners and workers belonged to this category. Below
textile
these was a class of workers whose trade required little or no
apprenticeship
and whose labour was fluctuating, but who when
form such
grouped into large masses were able,
if not to solid
unions the miners or cotton spinners,

as any at rate to organize
strikes on a large scale which sometimes proved

spasmodic
successful. Such were the dockers. Lower still was a class of un
the vicissitudes of supply and
skilled labourers, exposed to all
demand, but, since they worked in small workshops or

dispersed
in their own homes, incapable of combination, and therefore
rendered defenceless to a shameless exploitation, which it had
become to call the sweating system. Karl Marx in an
customary
analysis which has become classical has explained how this system
2
was an inevitable product of developing capitalism. The intro
duction of machinery, since it intensifies production with a re
duced number of hands, must constantly throw more and more

1
H. of C.July 6, 1908 (Parliamentary Debates, 4th Scries, vol. cxci, pp. 1330 sqq.).
2
Karl Marx, DasKapital, vol. Band I. Cap. xiii, 8: Revolutionirung von Manufaktur,
Handwerk und Hausarbeit durch die Grosse Industrie ( Transformation of Manufacture,
Handicraft and Domestic Labour by Large-Scale Industry ). S. and B. Webb s chapter
Parasitic Trades (Industrial Democracy, Part iii, Chap, iii)
is directly inspired by Marx s
thesis. Cf. on the sweating system and John A. Hobson, Problems of Poverty; an
causes
the Poor, pp. 64 sqq.; David Schloss, Methods of Indus
Inquiry into the Industrial Condition of
trial Remuneration, Ed. 3, 1898 (Chaps, xi, xiv and xv) also in Charles Booth
;
s comprehen
sive investigation, Life and Labour of the People in London, the chapter by Beatrice Potter
entitled The Tailoring Trade (First Series, vol. iv, 1902, pp. 33 sqq.).
244
labourers out of work. These labourers no longer needed to pro
duce are of use to the capitalists as a reserve from which they
can draw the necessary supplies of labour when their workers
make too exacting demands. Meanwhile these men are faced with
starvation. Rather than starve they are
willing to accept any wage
and work in any slum.
Thus there sprang up at the base of capitalism an entire growth
of small workshops not equipped with machinery and homes
where the entire family slaved from morning till night for a
miserable pittance. That is to say, in the very midst of capitalism
types of production belonging to the era before the industrial
revolution persisted, displaying all the evils of capitalist exploita
tion without the compensating advantages of machinery, and in
which there was no factory owner whom
the legislature could
make responsible for his workmen s welfare. This was the condi
tion of the clothing trade in London. Thousands of workers,
usually Jews from Eastern Europe, packed in the Whitechapel
slums, worked for the large tailoring and dressmaking firms of
the metropolis. It was in this trade that Beatrice Potter, the
future Mrs. Webb, the daughter of a wealthy capitalist, break
ing away from the upper middle-class surroundings in which
she had been brought up, had worked as a seamstress, had
graduated in Socialism, had explored the land of grinding want
and toil.
For a long time the indignation of British philanthropists had
been stirred by this spectacle of suffering. But almost half a cen
tury had passed since Hood wrote his Song of the Shirt, before
Parliament, ten or fifteen years before the close of the century,
saw the need of providing a remedy. In the late eighties Socialism
had reappeared in England and the London dockers were engaged
in an agitation almost revolutionary in character. A Conservative
member of the House of Lords, Lord Dunraven, obtained from
his colleagues in 1888 the appointment of a Committee to inquire
into the sweating system. 1 Opposition was not long delayed. The
Lords had voted in a fit of enthusiasm, and the Committee had
no sooner begun its labours when they took fright. Lord Dun-
raven retired, his place as chairman was taken by Lord Derby, a
man of more moderate views; and the Committee s recommen-
1
H. of L., February 28, 1888 (Parliamentary Debates, 3rd Series, vol. ccoocii, pp. 1598
sqq.).
245
dations 1 were certainly very timid. But they were not wholly
ineffective. How did the Committee of the House of Lords define
the sweating system? Sweating exists, according to the report,
when wages are inadequate, the work is excessively long, and the
buildings in which it is done are insanitary. But why were these
abuses so prevalent? The definition explained nothing, and the
current explanations with
report did no more than reject certain
which public opinion was too easily satisfied. 2 Sweating was not
specifically due to the existence
of the middleman who contracted
to supply certain goods and therefore gained the more on his
contracts the worse he paid the domestic workers among whom
he distributed the order. 3 For the worst cases of sweating, the
in London
sweating of seamstresses for example, took place
where the large firms gave out
the work directly to the home
workers. To make the contract system illegal would put an end
to a glaring abuse but would not go to the root of the evil. Nor
were the foreign workers, the Jews of the East End, wholly re
to lower the general level of
sponsible. Possibly they contributed
wages, but they were only a minority and a small minority of the
sweated workers. Therefore to prohibit or restrict the immigra
tion of foreign workers4 would not effect very much. In conse
quence, unless like the Committee we prefer

to leave the pheno
menon unexplained, we are thrown back on the explanation
given by Marx. And this was in fact the conclusion reached by
Sidney and Beatrice Webb, who at that time were beginning
their career as writers and social reformers.
5
What remedies
then should be applied? Those Marx had pointed out, suggested
by the inevitable economic development. Sooner or later the
competition of the machine must put an end to the workshop
without machinery and to domestic industry, even under the
1
Report from the Select Committee of the House of Lords on the Sweating System;
First to
gether with the Proceedings of the Committee; Minutes of Evidence and Appendix, 1888 ;
Second
with an Appen
Report, 1888; Third Report, 1889; Fourth Report, i889;K/#t Report, together
dix and Proceedings of the Committee, 1890.
*
Fifth Report, pp. xiii, sqq.
8 David Schloss (Methods of Industrial Remuneration, chaps, xiv and xv) while recognizing
that the contract system does not cover all the species of sweating is content with defining
and analysing it.
4
This was the purpose of the Aliens Act of 1905 (see my History of the English People,
vol. v, pp. 371-5).
6
Beatrice Potter (Mrs. S. Webb) The Lords and the Sweating System* (Nineteenth
Century, No. clx, June 1890; vol. xxvii, p. 885). Fabian Tract No. 50. Sweating; its Causes
and Remedy, Published by the Fabian Society, April 1895. Cf. J. A. Hobson, Problems of
Poverty. An Inquiry into the Industrial Condition of
the Poor, 1891.
246
novel forms they had assumed as an
unexpected by-product of
the first introduction of
machinery. The atrocious conditions of
such labour were sufficient to make their survival
impossible.
The therefore should facilitate the transition from
legislator
domestic labour to the factory equipped with machines in which
since the employer was in actual contact with his workers the
law could make him responsible for their welfare,1 and this was
in fact the tendency of measures
adopted by Parliament from 1 890
onwards as a result of the labours of the Lords Committee.
The Factory and Workshops Acts Amendment Act of iSpi 2
empowered the Government to require every owner of a factory
or workshop to supply aof the persons employed by him, as
list
workmen or as contractors outside his or workshop* and

factory
the places where they were employed. This was the first
legislative
interference with domestic labour and how timid it was The !
statute was merely permissive and even so allowed the minister

to do nothing more than gather information. An Act passed in
8
i895, shortly before the fall of the Liberal Cabinet, imposed a
fine not exceeding ten pounds upon any employer guilty of em
ploying workmen in a building which had been condemned as

insanitary by the Home Office inspector even if it were not a
workshop and inflicted the same penalty on an employer convic
ted of having given out pieces of clothing to be made up, cleaned
or repaired in a dwelling house where to his knowledge anyone
was suffering from an infectious disease. But the statute remained
a dead letter, principally because it imposed too heavy a task of
supervision on the officials of the central Government. The com

prehensive Factory Act of 1901* sought to remedy the defect by
transferring from the Home Office to the County Councils the
1
Sedgwick, a shoemaker, had already expressed the same point of view during the
discussions of a Conference on Industrial Remuneration at which Sir Charles Dilke took
4
the chair and which examined the social problem in its various aspects He described
. . .
the moral evils resulting from working in the men s homes and suggested that the whole
of them should be employed in factories and be subjected to the Factories Act.
54 & 55 Viet., Cap. 75: An Act to amend the Law relating to Factories and Work
2
shops (Factory and Workshop Act, 1891) Section 27, 11.

58 & 59 Viet., Cap. 37: An Act to amend and extend the Law relating to Factories and
8
Workshops (Factory and Workshop Act, 1895) Section 5, 6.

*
I Edw. 7, Cap. 22 An Act to
: consolidate with Amendments the Factory and Work
shop Acts (Factory and Workshop Act, 1901) Section 111-115: a domestic factory , a do
mestic workshop are defined as *a private house, room or place which, though used as a
dwelling, is by means of the work carried on there a factory or a workshop, as the case
may be, within the meaning of this Act, and in which neither steam, water, nor other
mechanical power is used in aid of the manufacturing process carried on there and in which
employed are members of the same family dwelling there*.
the only persons
247
task of prohibiting the giving out of work in buildings they
deemed dangerous or injurious to the health For the first time .
the Act of 1901 defined what it termed a domestic factory and

domestic workshop restricted the hours of labour for children
,
even at home and attempted to prevent the employer deceiving

the home worker as to the real amount of the payment he sent
him. But all these provisions seem to have effected very little. If
the Act of 1895 by making the Home Office responsible for its
execution had placed the controlling authority at such a distance
from its subjects that no effective supervision was possible, the
Act of 1901 by transferring the task to the local authorities had
put its enforcement into the hands of men who could not be
trusted to enforce it. For these local authorities were under the
influence of those whose interest it was that the Act should not be
carried out. A Parliamentary Committee reported that in 1906
there had been 1,201 breaches of the law but only three prosecu
tions. 1 And the same year official statistics
proved that no less than
a quarter of the medical officers failed to send the Home Office
the reports on the sanitary condition of workshops which they
2
were obliged by law to draw up.
What procedure then should be adopted? A group of women

who had taken the name of the Women s Industrial Council and of
whom Mrs. Ramsay MacDonald was the leading spirit had
devoted many years to the study of the problem. For women
were the principal victims of sweating. The Council had carried
out an important inquiry into domestic labour in London, 3 and
to secure further information had sent investigators to the English-
speaking countries overseas. In America it had become acquainted

with a legislative remedy which found favour with its members.
On receiving the report of the women sent to investigate, Ram
say MacDonald ana his wife made a personal visit to the United
1
Report from the . Select Committee on Home~Work> 1908, p. vii.
. .
8
Factory and Workshop Act, 1901 (Homework) Return to an Address of the Honourable House
of Commons dated 27 March, 1906 for Return as to the Administration^ in each County and
County Borough during i904 t by the Local Authorities of the Homework Provisions of the Factory
and Workshop Act, 190i, as shown by the reports of the Medical Officers of Health sent to the
Home Office under Section i32 of the Act t June 25, 1906, p. 3.
3
Home Industries in London, 1st Report 1897; Interim Report 1906; Third fUport 1908.
248
Statyi-and were converted. 1 In the states of New York and Massa
chusetts, and in sonie others, the law forbade
any work to be
given out unless the places where the workers did their work had
been previously inspected and received a licence No
employer .
might employ any domestic worker who had not presented this
licence. It was for the workers to obtain the licence. Whereas
under the system at present in force the factory
inspectors and
sanitary inspectors sought out or were supposed to seek out the
workers, if the American system were adopted, the workers
would be obliged to apply to the inspectors, if they wished to
enjoy the right to work. In 1898 the Women s Industrial Council
got a Member of Parliament to introduce a Bill on these lines in
the Commons. But the system presented
many difficulties. To
carry out such a law would require an army of inspectors. And it
would be inhuman to condemn to unemployment wretches
whose poverty compelled them to work in a slum dwelling.
There was no escape from a vicious circle. They wanted to sub
ject domestic workshops to the same regulations as factories, but
the difference between the domestic workshop and the factory
consisted precisely in the circumstance that the Factory Acts
could not be applied to the former.
It was then
suggested that the problem should be approached
from another angle. Instead of attempting to secure for the vic
tims of the Sweating System a maximum working day, and a
minimum of sanitary conditions in the places where they worked,
why not, since the problem of supervision seemed insoluble,
evade it
by attempting to enforce a minimum wage? For some
years past it had become customary for the state or the local
authorities to insert into every contract contemplated or conclu
ded with a contractor a fair-wages clause guaranteeing the workers
the wage usually paid by the particular corporation or current
in the locality. 2 But the first statesman to conceive in its full
1
MacDonald, Margaret Ethel MacDonald, 1912, pp. 142 sqq.
J. R..
2
See the text of the Fair Wages Resolution adopted by the House of Commons on
February 13, 1891 That in the opinion of this House it is the duty of the Government in
:
all Government contracts to make

provision against the evil recently disclosed before the
Sweating Committee, to insert such conditions as may prevent the abuse arising from sub
letting, and to make every effort to secure the payment of such wages as are generally
accepted and current in every trade for corporation works/ Fair Wages Committee, Report
of the Fair Wages Committee with Appendices* 1908 Minutes of Evidence taken before the
Departmental Committee appointed to consider the Working of the Fair Wages Resolution of the
House of Commons ofl89i, 1908. Cf. the resolution passed by the House of Commons on
March 10, 1909, which differs from the former only by its more elaborate terminology
249
extent the plan of controlling
sweating by fixing wages w;v the
Australian Deakin, the Prime Minister of Victoria. Therefore, in
the present instance, as in the suggestion to institute a
system of
licences, England was finding her models beyond her shores,
though within the English-speaking world. Deakin had observed

legislation which protected their
that employers, to evade the
workmen, closed their factories and gave out the work to home
workers. In 1893 the Melbourne Government following the
example set by the British House of Lords appointed a Commit

tee of inquiry, and after the publication of two reports which
dealt with two trades in which sweating was prevalent had passed
the important Act of 1896, which laid down the principle of an
apprenticeship in which the apprentices would be paid a mini
mum legal wage and set up special boards, whose members were
elected, and which consisted half of workers, half of employers,
apprentices, who were to be

to fix in every trade the number of
at least eighteen
years old, and the minimum wage whether
payable by time or by the piece. These boards were to be set up
by a departmental order in every trade which seemed threatened
with sweating. To begin with they were set
up in four.
1
On the benches of the House of Commons a politician sat who

had once been universally regarded as marked out for the highest
offices in the state but who had been debarred for ever from the
ministerial bench by a scandal which was

brought into the
courts. Sir Charles Dilke remained, nevertheless, an influential
Member of Parliament, an imperialist with Socialist leanings. He
was a speaker heard with attention on questions of foreign policy,
and provides penalties for the contractor who infringes the conditions it
prescribes. Charles
Watney and James A. Little (Industrial Warfare. The Aims and Claims of Capital and Labour,
p. 38) add that only powerful unions for example, the Boot and Shoemakers could ,
secure the enforcement of the resolution: that is to say, it was a dead letter in those bran
ches of industry where sweating prevailed just because the workers were
unorganized.
1
By 1908 they had been set up in fifty-two by-extensions of the law which far exceeded
the domain of sweating. A special amendment was found
necessary to prevent the boards
fixing not minimum but normal wages. For this legislation see Albert Metin Le Socialisms
sans doctrine:La question agratre et la question ouvriere en Australie et Nouvelle-Ze lande, 1901,
pp. 134 sqq.; V. S. Clark, The Labour Movement in Australasia: A
Study in Social Democracy
1907, pp. 138 sqq,; also the important official report published under the title: Home Office,
Report to the Secretary of State for the Home Department on the Wages Board and Industrial
Conciliation and Arbitration Acts of Australia and New Zealand
by Ernest Aves, 1908. We
should notice as belonging to the same order of ideas, the clause of the New Zealand
Factory Act of 1901 which laid down the principle of the minimum wage for children
and adolescents of both sexes, five shillings a week below sixteen, with an annual increase
until the age of twenty. (Ernest Aves,
Report on .Australia and New Zealand, 1908,
. .
p.
88.)
250
imperial organization, army reform, and labour legislation. His

imperialism brought him into contact with the Colonial states
men. His Socialist sympathies made him keenly interested in the
experiments in state Socialism conducted by the Australian
Governments. If we are to believe him, he had discussed with
Deakin in 1887 the principle of a fixed legal wage. However that
may be, in 1895 we find him still attracted by the system of
1
licences. It was not until 1900 that he began to introduce annually
in the Commons a Wages Boards Bill copied from the Victorian
Act of 1896.2
At first it was a formality and the debate between the respective
champions of licences and wage boards presented for a long time
a purely academic interest. The attention of the public was en
gaged elsewhere, occupied by questions which had nothing to do

with labour legislation. The situation was entirely changed by
the powerful movement of public opinion which preceded the
Election of 1906. Some dressmakers who had been fined for
having made their workgirls work more than the legal hours
pleaded in justification that they had been obliged to finish in
time a valuable dress to be worn at Ascot, or at a charity ball.
The papers expressed their indignation and aroused the indigna
tion of their readers at the exploitation to which these unfortu
nate sempstresses were subject and a lady of position introduced
3
a scandal of this kind into a play she wrote. In 1906 the Daily
Neivs arranged an exhibition to bring home to the fashionable
and middle-class public the horrors of sweating. Another was
held in 1907 and was opened by Lord Milner.
What should be done to satisfy the obvious desire of the public?

The Government appointed a Committee of Inquiry and sent
one of its members to investigate the working of the Australian
were
wages boards. The MacDonalds, opponents of the system,
1 H. of C., April 22, 1895 (Parliamentary Debates, 4th Series, vol. xxxii, p. 1465).
2
For Sir Charles Dilke s initiative in this sphere see his evidence before the Committee
of 1907 (Minutes of Evidence taken before the Select Committee on Home Work, May
13, 1908, pp. I73-4-)
*
Warp and Woof, by Mrs. Alfred Lyttelton, 1904.
251
not converted. 1 After their visit to America they had visited
Australia and did not approve of the Australian experiment. It
had been conducted on too small a scale to be convincing. And
in Australia society was constructed on lines so simple that it was
impossible to be certain that a piece of social legislation which had

proved successful there could be applied successfully to the
complicated social structure of England. Nor was the problem
the same in a country where there was a scarcity of women, and
a country where because there were too many women, they were
shamelessly exploited. The report of the Government commis

sioner confirmed their views. The Australian law, he reported,
dealt only with one symptom of the social disease instead of
attacking its root. Old age pensions and a system of universal

state insurance were the reforms which should be adopted. Pos
sibly, but in that case why persist

in
advocating the system of
licences to which these criticisms were equally indeed even more
applicable? Some immediate action must be taken against sweat
ing and it was evident that it was not Ramsay MacDonald s but
Sir Charles Dilke s remedy which had the favour of the public.
on February 21, 1908, a Wages Boards Bill on the lines
"When
of Dilke was read die second time and debated in the House of
s
Commons it was clear that its principle was approved by the

entire House without distinction of party or class. The only pro
tests came from a few irreconcilable opponents of all state inter
ference in the economic sphere. The Tariff Reformers were con

tent to urge that the Britishmarket should be protected against
the dumping of cheap goods produced by foreign sweating. The
Home Secretary, Herbert Gladstone, in a speech which betrayed
his embarrassment, explained that the Government could in no
case accept the principle of the minimum legal wage, and that
the Home Office was already too overburdened with work to
assume any new functions. He asked the House to wait until the
Committee had reported. Its reportj published in the summer of
2
1908, was favourable to the system of boards, and it was
1
See Mrs. J. Ramsay MacDonald s evidence before the Committee (Report from the
Select Committee on Home Work, 1907: Min. of Ev., pp. 211 sqq.); also J. Ramsay Mac-
Donald, Sweating and Wages Boards (Nineteenth Century, November 1908, vol. Ixiv,
pp. 748 sqq,).

2
Report from the Select Committee on Home Work: together with the proceedings of
the Com
mittee, Minutes of Evidence and Appendix, 1907 also under the same tiUe 1908. The
Committee had been appointed to consider and report upon the conditions of labour in
trades in which home labour is prevalent and the proposals, including those for the estab-
252
Churchill who when the session of 1909 opened took charge of
the Government Bill dealing with the question. Like Herbert
Gladstone he was the heir of a great name, but his inheritance was
not the same. Under his control the Board of Trade did not hesi
tate to assume the responsibilities which
frightened Gladstone at
the Home Office.
The Bill 1
passed by both Houses without serious opposition set
up in those trades in which wages were deemed exceptionally
low, Trade Boards to consist in equal numbers of representatives,
elected or nominated according to circumstances, of
employers
and employed, and members nominated by the State, whose
number must always be less than half that of the elected members.
At the head of the Board were placed a chairman and a secretary
appointed by the President of the Board of Trade. His choice was
subject to only one restriction: he could not be himself a member
of the Board. It would be the duty of the Trade Board to fix a
minimum wage both for piecework and work paid by time.
The Act was made applicable at first to four trades: ready-made
and wholesale tailoring (branches of the dressmaking industry
in which sweating was particularly rife), the making of paper or
chip boxes, machine lace-making and chain-making. Altogether

they employed some 200,000 workers, of whom 140,000 were
women and girls. But the Act provided for its extension to other
trades by an order of the Board of Trade subject to the veto of
Parliament. In 1913 it was extended to five moire trades, that is to
some hundred and fifty to two hundred thousand additional
workers. 2 Twelve years earlier the Webbs had not dared to con
template such a measure. Nevertheless, it was a first attempt to
introduce into the Labour code of Great Britain the principle of
the minimum wage, which formed part of their formula the
National Minimum .
lishment of Wages Boards and the licensing of Work Places, which have been made for
the remedying of existing abuses Its report, hostile to the system of licences, pronounced
.
in favour of the system of boards. But it was not the same with the Commissioner s report.
Ernest Aves had visited Australia. His conclusions are sceptical and on the whole unfavour
able.
1
9 Edw. 7, Cap. 22 : An Act to provide for the Establishment of Trade Boards for
certain Trades (Trade Boards Act, 1909).
2
Trade Boards Act, 1909. Memoranda in reference to the Working of the Trade Boards Act,
1913.
253
If the fundamental cause of sweating was indeed, as we have

seen reason to believe, the existence of a large surplus of labour,
constantly thrown onto the streets by large-scale industry and

constituting a reserve always ready to take the place of rebel
workers, the problem of sweating formed part of the larger prob
lem of unemployment which in 1908 once more began to engage
public attention more seriously than three years before. We have
already spoken of the origin of this new crisis which began in the
United States towards the close of 1907, to spread immediately
to England and which increased in gravity throughout the year
1908. At the end of October 1907 out of a hundred members of
a union there were not five unemployed, a year later there were
almost ten, and during the six months following never less than
eight.
1
There was hardly a district unaffected. the Clyde and On
Tyne the evil was aggravated by the strikes of which we have
spoken, and this was also the case in Lancashire where there was
dispute in the cotton industry. But above all it was
a prolonged
2
the East End of London, the Mecca of social reformers as John ,
Burns ironically called it, and Glasgow which were the head
quarters of an agitation provoked by the unemployment and
systematically directed against the Labour Party as well as the
two old bourgeois parties.
At Glasgow at the beginning of
September, broke out they had been expected to be even

riots
more serious on the occasion of Prince Arthur of Connaught s

visit to the city. Throughout the
country an agitator named
Grey collected bodies of hunger marchers who made their way,
begging as they went, towards their Mecca the East End of ,
London. In London itself, bands of starving workmen setting out

from the East End marched to Hyde Park and Belgravia and as
near to Westminster as the police allowed, to parade their poverty
under the eyes of the wealthy bourgeoisie. Their leaders spoke the
language of revolution. If we cannot get bread for our starving
wives and children, then let us round/ 3 Gray-
rob and plunder all
son, the revolutionary member for Colne Valley, reminded his

1
Abstract of Labour Statistics. Board of Trade (Labour
Department), Fourteenth Abstract of
Labour Statistics of the United Kingdom, 1908-9, 1911, p. 5.
*
H. of C., October 26, 1908 (Parliamentary Debates, 4th Series, vol. cxliv, p. 1674).
8
Williams at Tower Hill, October 28.
254
hearers, behaviour had led to his expulsion from the
when his
House, that Parliament all along had passed measures for the
1
good of the people only when dragged

from their hands by riot
2
and bloodshed. Brush them aside like smoke/ saidCunninghame
Graham, a survivor of the revolutionary movement of 1889.
3
Another orator was more pointed: Go to Westminster with

bombs and make them jump * But all this unrest was in fact
!
simply an echo of contemporary

movements in Russia, where
the Czar was within an ace of losing his throne, and in France
where the syndicalists were spreading the idea of a general revo
to become chronic. We shall
lutionary strike and disorder tended
watch the infection spread in the following years. But these mal
contents were extremely feeble revolutionaries. They did no
more damage than a few broken windows. They were beggars
who sought to inspire pity rather than fear. On Sunday morning
the hunger marchers invaded the churches, listened quietly to
the sermon the preacher delivered for their benefit and after the
service took tea in his garden.
The Liberals, and still more the Labour party, were obliged to
take these grievances seriously; to do otherwise would be to
admit to the working-class electorate that the victory of January
1906 had been empty because the Liberals
and Labour members
were as powerless as the Conservatives to deal with the problem
of unemployment. In the House of Commons on October 21
crowded benches in a speech which was
5
Asquith, addressing
all the measures actually taken or
loudly applauded, enumerated
in contemplation. They were the undertaking of public works
by the State, authorization of the local authorities to raise loans

to the value of a million, and government grants. The Imperialists
in the Cabinet took the opportunity to increase by a recruiting
of the Special Reserve, and lay down
campaign the numbers
torpedo-boat destroyers
and cruisers before the date fixed. More
over, the Government undertook to
double the Central Unem
ployed Fund and make its distribution more elastic. It also
promised new legislation in 1909.
Series, vol. cxciv,

1 H. of C., October 15-16, 1908 (Parliamentary Debates, 4th
pp. 495 sqq., 631 sqq.).
2
Keighley, October 24-
8
Glasgow, December 12.
4
Hyde Park, October 16.
5 Part.
Deb., 4th Ser., vol. cxciv, pp.
1160 sqq.
255
What would be its character ? Would it follow the lines of the
Unemployed Workmen Bill, drawn up a year earlier by the
Independent Labour party and which the Labour party headed

by Ramsay MacDonald had been compelled willy-nilly to sup
port in March 1908.* The Bill, intended to replace the Act of
1905 and bearing the same title, consisted of no less than fourteen
clauses was in fact rather a manifesto than a Bill in the strict
sense. In substance it amounted to the demand that the local
authorities insteadof being merely empowered, as in the Act of
1905, to form Distress Committees, should be compelled to
form them and that these Committees for dealing with unem
ployment in place of the very indefinite functions assigned to
them in 1905 should be obliged to compile lists of all the unem
ployed and find them employment, or if that were impossible,
relieve the men and their families. The Bill would introduce into
English law the double principle of the right to live and the right
to work. A committee was formed, at the head of which were
Grayson, Blatchford, and Hyndman, by those Socialists who

considered not only the Labour party but even the Independent
Labour party too timid, to put pressure upon the Houses of
Parliament to pass what had become known as the Right to
Work Bill.
was John Burns, the president of the Local Government

It
Board, who in March 1908 speaking on behalf of the Govern

ment had asked the House to throw out the Unemployed Work
men Bill. Far from approving of this extension of the Act of 1905,
he pronounced that measure itself mistaken, passed too hastily.
Itwas a strange speech on the lips of the man who by the agitation
he had once conducted had done more than anybody to hasten
the introduction and passing of the statute. He denied however
that since taking office he had done
anything to hamper its execu
tion; on the contrary he had given larger credits to the local
position to make use of, and he

authorities than they were in a
attempted to prove by actual figures that the agricultural colonies,

1
A
Bill to provide Work through Public Authorities for
Unemployed Persons; and for
other Purposes connected therewith. H. of C., March 13, 1908
(Parliamentary Debates, 4th
Series, vol. cbocxvi, pp. 10 sqq.).
256
founded in pursuance of the Act to bring back the workers to the
land, had been costly failures. The Unionist benches applauded,
the Labour members received his speech in icy silence. Now in
the meetings of unemployed he was die object of violent attacks:
he was Ananias Judas
,
who had pledged himself to the
,
people and had sold them for two thousand pieces of gold 1 The.
unfortunate man was indignant and from one point of view

his indignation was justified. He had not been bought. He was
scrupulously honest. But how could he have failed to see what

a
ridiculous figure he cut when he sang the praises of a social order
which he found after all not so ill-constructed since it had allowed
such a whole-hearted Socialist as John Burns to climb so high?
The Cabinet however kept its pledge to attempt a legislative
remedy. If it were not to be the Right to Work Bill what should
it be? They were waiting for the report of the Royal Commis
sion appointed to examine the problem by the Unionist Govern

ment at the time of the last industrial crisis. It reported in February
1909 just as the Session of Parliament opened. The time had come
to act.
The Commission which had just reported had been appointed
on December 4, 1905, the very day when the Unionist Cabinet
resigned, to study on the one hand the working
of the Poor Laws,
on the other the different methods employed outside the Poor
Laws Tor meeting distress arising from want of employment,
severe industrial depression That
particularly during periods of
.
is to say, the same year in which for the first time by setting up
the Distress Committees attempted to tackle the problem of

it
unemployment, Balfour s Cabinet was contemplating the possi

of more ambitious measures, to consist of a general reform
bility
of the Poor Laws. The Commission was composed of eighteen
members, among them Beatrice Webb. Two years before,
Balfour had put Sidney Webb on the Commission appointed to
inquire into the best means
of amending the laws relating to
disputes between employers and workmen. But whereas Sidney
Webb had seriously compromised his popularity with the work
ing class by his views on the responsibility
of the Unions, Beatrice
made a very different use of the Commission of 1905. She per
suaded three members of the Commission to join her in signing
an excellent and voluminous minority report which recommen-
1 Victor Grayson, speech at Glasgow, October 17, 1908.
257
ded a number of measures bearing a strong imprint of state
Socialism everything in fact contained in the Labour Right to
Work Bill which could possibly be applied in practice. Printed
1
at the Government
expense, then reprinted in a handier form and
circulated among the public with considerable energy and skill,
it
finally became almost as important as the majority report ,
and appeared to represent almost equally the opinion of the

Commission. We must examine both reports together.
On one point the majority and the minority were agreed.
Both recommended the abolition of the Boards of Guardians
directly elected which had administered the Poor Law since 1834.
Now that there were county and borough councils, charged with
the general administration of the counties and boroughs, why
not hand over to them the functions formerly entrusted to bodies
specially elected? In 1902 the directly elected school boards had
been abolished and replaced by education committees elected by
the County Councils. The Boards of Guardians must be also
abolished and replaced by committees elected by the Councils for
the special purpose of poor relief. But the majority report was
content with transferring. to these committees the functions for
merly exercized by the Boards of Guardians. The signatories
obviously hoped, though they did not say so, that the Poor Law
would be more economically administered by a committee not
in direct contact with the electors. 2 The Webbs, on the other
hand, the real authors of the minority report, proposed to break
up the entire machinery of the Poor Law. On one point in parti
cular, among many others, it had not fulfilled its authors hopes.
They had intended in 1834 that different treatment should be

applied to infants and adults, the aged and those still capable of
work, the healthy and the infirm. In fact, all had been herded
together in the workhouse. Why, asked the Webbs, should it be
left to the masters of the workhouses to
give a free education to
1
S. and B. Webb, The Break-Up of the Poor Law: being Part One of the Minority Report
of the Poor Law Commission, edited with Introduction by, 1909; The Public Organization of
the Labour Market: being Part Two of the Minority Report oftiie Poor Law Commission, edited
with Introduction by, 1909. For the problem of the causes of unemployment and the
remedies to be applied, See the vigorous observations, trenchant and uncompromising as
is the
way of youth, by a disciple of the Webbs, W.
H. (now Sir William) Bcveridge
(Sociological Papers, vol. iii, 1907, pp. 323 sqq., and also by the same author: Unemploy
ment: A Problem of Industry, Ed. 1909).
1,
*
For criticisms of the proposed abolition of the Boards of Guardians by the orthodox
Poor Law Minority Report.
Socialists see Report of Debate between George Lansbury and H.
Quelch on September 20 and 21, 1910.
258
the pauper children when all children now had in
principle the
right to a free education? It was the business of the education
authorities, asit was the business of the health committees to
take care of the sick and of the asylum committees to look after
lunatics and mental defectives. As for the aged, all that was neces
sary was to extend the application of the principle laid down by

Parliament a few months earlier and provide them with old age
pensions at the cost of the State. There remained the healthy
adults. For their relief the minority
proposed a new system which
would have no connection with the old Poor Law, and lay
entirely outside the scope of the majority report, a national system
for abolishing unemployment by the organization of the labour
market .
The Webbs asked for the institution of a National Labour

Exchange with branches throughout the country which would
keep a regular and exact record of all the unemployed. Em
1
ployers would inform these Exchanges of the number of hands

they required. Thus everything possible would be done, since
supply and demand would be brought together throughout the
country, to get rid of those stagnant pools of unemployment of
which the employers took advantage in particular localities to
lower wages unduly. When the surplus of unemployed labour
had thus been reduced very considerably, it would be reduced
still further
by making less use of child labour, prohibiting the
employment of mothers of very small children, and reducing the
railwaymen s working day to eight hours. Since, however, they
could not hope to abolish unemployment completely, whatever
surplus of unemployed still remained should be relieved by adopt
ing within limits a system of compulsory insurance against un
employment. And special relief work should also be found for
the unemployed, work of a useful nature and at the same time
such as would re-educate them for regular employment at a trade.
To perform all these new functions while taking over the adminis
tration of labour legislation hitherto confided to other depart
ments a special Ministry of Labour should be created. Organiza
tion of the labour market, amounting in practice to organization
1 It
was a method which Germany had employed on a fairly large scale for the last ten or
fifteen years as a cure for unemployment. But the German Labour Exchanges (Arbeits-
nachweise) were either maintained by private associations, or organized by municipalities
(W. H. Beveridge, Unemployment: A Problem of Industry, 1910, pp. 239 sqq.). England was
therefore preparing to outstrip Germany on the path of state control.
259
of labour Saint Simon old watchword; the right to work
s
Fourier s old slogan.

They had made much stir in France about
1848. Now they were crossing the Channel. How many English
men who in 1909 were
speaking the language spoken by the dis
ciples
of Fourier and Saint Simon knew the origin of the formulas
which came so readily to their
lips?
Winston Churchill took the question of unemployment out of

the hands ofJohn Burns, as at the same time he took the
question
of sweating out of Herbert Gladstone s. The Bill he submitted
to the Commons on May 20 after
explaining the day before the
1
main lines of the Cabinet adopted in a
s
policy on the subject
modified form the recommendations of the minority report. It
was therefore, as Arthur Henderson speaking on behalf of the
Labour party jestingly remarked, nothing but the Right to
Work Bill in
penny numbers
2
Churchill, who promised in the
.
near future a system of unemployment insurance with contribu

tions from the workers,
proposed to set up Labour Exchanges
throughout the United Kingdom. The country would be divided
of these the Labour Exchanges would
into ten districts. In each
be grouped around a clearing house for the entire area, and the
work of the ten
regional clearing houses similarly co-ordinated
by a central
clearing
house in London. It was intended to establish
some thirty or forty Exchanges in the large cities, forty-five in
towns of lesser size, and a hundred and fifty offices of the third
class in still smaller centres.
In all the large centres there would be a mixed consultative
committee composed in equal numbers of the workers and em
ployers representatives, with a permanent official chairman. The

object of this vast .organization was to find
employment for the
workmen available, workmen for the
employment available. It
was understood that the officials of the Exchanges would observe
neutrality in the case of labour disputes. In other words the

a strict
employers must not hope to make use of them to obtain black-

1
H. of C, May 19, 1909 (Parliamentary Debates, Commons 1909, 5th Series, vol. v,
pp. 499 sqq.). For a more detailed defence of the Bill see H. of C.June 1909, Winston
i<5,
Churchill s
(ibid., vol.
speech pp. 1035 sqq.).
2
H. of C, May 19, 1909; ibid., vol. v, p. 519.
260
legs In the same spirit it was laid down that a workman might
.
always refuse the work offered him, if a union rate of wages

was
in operation in the district and he were offered a wage less than
that rate. The economic which found expression in
philosophy
the reform must be clearly understood. Just as a certain type of
collectivism does not contest the principle, dear to Liberal econo
mists, that a worker s remuneration should be proportionate to
the value of his work, but claims that if the principle is to be made
necessary to establish what was
effective state interference is called
of the labour
equality of starting point so the organization
,
market to use Beatrice Webb s phraseology, does not contradict

,
the principle, equally dear to the Liberal economists, which

demands the utmost possible fluidity of supply and demand. But
whereas the Liberal economist believes that it is sufficient to re
move the artificial obstacles to this fluidity set up by particular
statutes, according to the new
Socialism the obstacles are natural,
difficulties of movement, the ignorance of those concerned. To
remove them the State must intervene. Actually, its intervention
was rapid and vigorous. The two Houses passed the Bill without
serious debate and on January 31, 1910, eighty Labour Exchanges
1
were opened. In London Churchill opened them in person amid

the cheers of the crowd.
a session these two
Responsible for introducing in single
Bills,
one intended to stamp out sweating, the other to get rid of un

the appear
employment, Churchill at the end of 1909 presented
ance of a great social reformer. By the extension of its functions,
as a result of which it was becoming in effect a ministry of labour
as well as of trade, the Board of Trade was rising in the ministerial
the Act passed this year
hierarchy, an advance recognized by
which permittedthe salary of the President to be raised from
.2,000 to ^s,ooo. What were these new functions which justi
2
fied this increase of salary? In the first place, the work of arbitra
tion and conciliation. We have already seen what an important
the Establishment of Labour Exchanges and
9 Edw. 7, Cap. 7: An Act to provide for
1
for other Purposes Incidental thereto (Labour Exchanges Act, 1909).

the Statutory Limitation on the Salary of the
9 Edw. 7, Cap. 23: An Act to remove
2
an Act of
President of the Board of Trade (Board of Trade Act, 1909). It began by repealing
of the
1829 which limited the salary to 2,000 so as to make it possible to raise the salary
President of the Local
President of the Board of Trade, together with the salary of the
Government Board, to the same level as that of the Secretaries of State. A second clause
not benefit
added at Churchill s request provided that the actual holder of the office should
Debates, Commons 1909, 5th
by the increase (H. of C, April 20, 1909; Parliamentary
Series, vol. iii, p. H93)-
26l
numerous meetings between representatives of the wor-
art the
and employers organizations, held under the aegis first of

ers
Lloyd George, then of Churchill, had come to play in the social

history of the country. In September 1908 to
make this work
easier Churchill had three panels set
up by his department, a panel
of chairmen, a panel of employers, a panel of workmen so that
a tribunal suitable persons would
of arbitration composed of three
be in readiness to intervene at the sign of any dispute that
first
1
might threaten. The importance of this function may be judged
by the fact that the machinery provided by the Conciliation Act
of 1896, which had been utilized only 209 times in a period of
ten years, was employed in thirty-nine instances in 1907, in sixty
2
in 1908 and in fifty-nine in 1909, that is 158 times in three years.
But the Board of Trade had a further office to fulfil, to enforce
the social legislation. And these statutes,
ever more numerous and
more complicated Labour Exchanges Act
particularly the
required for their execution a host of officials. A very serious
change was taking place and for the first time attracting notice.
England was becoming bureaucratic.
According to the Census of 1911 the Civil Service employed
162,000 officials as compared with 116,413 in 1901, 79,449 in
1891, 50,485 in 1 88 1. According to the same census the local
government employed 20,985 persons in 1881, 24,930 in 1891,
36,870 in 1901, 64,087 in 1911. The increase during the last de
cade had exceeded 100 per cent. It was a body of officials formid
able by their numbers, formidable also for the delicate nature of
performance of which they were invested
their functions, for the
with powers almost discretionary. For it was impossible for
Parliament to draw up statutes in such minute detail that the text
provided for every concrete case to which they were applicable.

A statute was in current parlance only a skeleton . It was for the
official to clothe the skeleton with flesh, 3 by administrative rules
1
Board of Trade Memorandum, September 15, 1908.
2
Lord Askwith, Industrial Problems and Disputes, 1920, p. 126.
3
H. of C, June 16, 1909, G. P. Gooch s speech: This Bill as it is before us is a mere
skeleton. The flesh and blood will be put on it by means of the Regulations which will be
issued by the Board of Trade (Parliamentary Debates, Commons 1909, 5th Series, vol. vi,
p. 1028). Cf. Lloyd George s
interesting observations when he introduced his Merchant
Shipping Amendment Bill: It is very difficult to carry Acts of Parliament nowadays,
under any scheme, with its present congestion of business. ... It is inconvenient to require
an Amending Act of Parliament whenever a new regulation seems to be necessary, to meet
the changing circumstances of our mercantile marine such as have taken place during the
lasttwenty years. Who
can foresee what may happen? There may be a totally different
262
. The number of these orders had become so
or orders great and
the need that the public should be informed of them so urgent
that from 1893 onwards an official collection was published more
bulky from the outset than the annual collection of statutes and
1
increasingly voluminous every year. Moreover, it very soon be
came impossible in practice to allow anybody who wished to
appeal to the ordinary courts from any administrative decision
whatever. The courts would have been unable to cope with the
work and the adtninistrative machine would have been broken
down. Therefore, since in. England, unlike the Continent, there
exists no special judicature to settle disputes between the state and
the individual, the custom grew up to be sanctioned within a
few years by a decision of the Lord Chancellor2 of regarding
the to decide, without recourse to the courts, speci
officials as free
fic cases submitted to them concerning the detailed application of

Acts of Parliament. 3
state of things, and what we want is to be able by means of an Order in Council, if neces
sary, to introduce regulations applicable to the changing circumstances of the hour, with
out having to have constant resort to the House of Commons
to obtain sanction for every
change that may be required(H. of C., Part. Deb., 4th Ser., vol. cliv, p. 251).
1
Statutory Rules and Orders other than those of a Local, Personal or Temporary Character,
issued in the year 1893 [and onwards] : with a list of the more important statutory orders of a local
character, arranged in classes and an index. Published by Authority. The publication was made
in obedience to the Rule Publication Act (55 Viet, Cap. 66) 1893. Something of the
extent of this subordinate legislation may be indicated by comparing its volume with that
of the parliamentary statutes. The annual volume of published general statutes contains
from 80 to 100 Acts of Parliament, and from 500 to 600 pages. In addition to the public
general statutes there are each year several volumes of local and private acts, including
are
provisional orders and confirming acts which, while formally passed by Parliament,
the result of the actions of government departments and small private bill committees.
But beyond this the annual volumes of Statutory Rules and Orders of a general character
issued without parliamentary action, contain about ten times as many measures as the
public general acts and run from 1,500 to 3,000 pages. Besides these there are each, year
several hundreds of rules and orders of local application, listed only by title in the annual
volume* (Cecil T. Carr, Delegated Legislation 1926: University of Illinois; Studies in the
Social Sciences, September 1925, vol. xiii, No. 30, p. 8).
2
Board of Education v. Rae and others (1911); Local Government Board v. Arlidge
(1915). Cf. W. A. Robson, Justice and Administrative Law, pp. 141-2, 143 sqq.
3
These administrative regulations which amount to genuine laws constitute what Sir
Frederick Pollock (Encyclopaedia of the Laws of England, being a new abridgment of the eminent
legal Authorities, vol. i, 1897,
General Introduction, p. 6) proposed to term Delegated
legislation The name caught on. It serves as the
. title of three lectures given at Cambridge
in 1921 by Cecil T. Carr which he published in book form the same year. He attributes it
however to Sir Courtenay Ilbert. For the nature not only quasi-legislative but quasi-
judicial of the administrative decisions see the recent
work by William A. Robson, Justice
and Administrative Law : AStudy of the British Constitution, 1928. But the first writer
before
the war who seems to have been struck by the importance of the problem is the German
D. Otto Koelreuther, Verwaltungsrecht und Verwaltungsrcchtssprechung im modernen England,
1912. See in particular p. 223 : If we consider the unsystematic fashion in which English
law has regulated the power of government officials to make decisions, we cannot escape
the feeling that it is not considered desirable that the public should realize that a powerful
263
The English system of entrance examinations for all branches
of the Civil Service, for which moreover candidates were ex
tremely plentiful, ensured an excellent body of civil servants. Was
it a fair
ground for complaint that the subjects set in these exami
nations were such as to favour the graduates of the two great
universities, so that the government departments in London were
staffed by members of the ruling aristocracy? Or if this were an
exaggeration that at any rate this favoured class constituted in
every department an all-powerful clique and since there were no

examinations for promotion monopolized all the high positions. 1
Even if this were true, was it to be lamented? Was it not rather
congratulation that an aristocracy which throughout

a matter for
the nineteenth century had occupied itself so zealously in Parlia
ment with the conduct of national business should now put itself
at the head of the administrative departments? Was there not
rather genuine ground for anxiety in the new system adopted by
the Liberal Cabinet of appointing the officials of the Labour
Exchanges without holding an examination? Competitive exami

nation, it was argued by those who advocated its abandonment,
could not furnish the necessary guarantees for the proper exercise
bureaucracy has gradually grown up in its midst whose action is to a large extent exempt
from parliamentary control. And if we adopt the point of view that the monopoly which
the Courts asserted as guardian of the constitution during the eighteenth century expressed
in the clearest and most mature form the principle of a state rounded on law, we must
regard the development in England, if not as a retrogression, at least as a deflection
latest
of the straight path which the development of English constitutional law has taken hither
to. We shall gauge better the importance of the change undergone in this respect by
British institutions and public opinion, if we compare with the earlier editions of A. V.
Dicey s, Introduction to the Study of the Law of the Constitution, the introduction to the 8th
edition written in 1915.
1
A. Lawrence Lowell, The Government of England, vol. i, p. 163 *. By far the larger
: . .
part of the successful candidates come from one or the other of (the) two great universities.
But the composition of the universities had undergone a profound change during the last
few years and this did not mean that these Oxford and Cambridge graduates had all come
from the seven great Public Schools. See the figures given by A. Ponsonby (The Decline oj
Aristocracy, 1912, pp. 295-6). The number of successful candidates from the seven great
Public Schools was 16 out 01*97 in 1906, 18 out of 92 in 1907, 13 out of 82 in 1908, 17 out
of 89 in 1909, 17 out of 113 in 1910. Nevertheless the same author can write (pp. 117-18) :
The permanent Civil Service, partly recruited from this upper class, in close contact with
it,and blindly on the side of law, authority and tradition, extends its influence and tightens
the supremacy of the executive with bureaucratic bonds. It is of interest to note how the
decline of imperialism in conjunction with the growing influence of state socialism seems
to have favoured the recruiting of the Home Civil Service. See Lord Selbourne s speech
at Oxford, October 27, 1911 When I was at Oxford the best brains of Oxford, when they
:
had a chance, went to the Indian Civil Service. It was only the second best as a rule who
went to the Home Civil Service. Now all the best men put **H" first, second, and "I"
"C"
third. The best men are all prepared to take the least risks. Do you think what it means
when an Oxford man, the pick of his year, says: would rather be a clerk in the Home
"I
Civil Service than go to India or the Colonies"?
264
of these novel and delicate functions. What was wanted was not
so much
special knowledge or a high standard of general educa
tion as acquaintance with industrial and labour circles. No doubt,
but the door was thrown open all the same to favouritism, per
sonal influence and political preferences.
When all is said, it is beyond doubt that the excellence of British
social manners, the courteous tolerance of those in command,
and the obedience of their subordinates confer on the British Civil
Service, as on other British institutions, qualities which distin
guish it from similar institutions on the Continent. It is neverthe
less indubitable that it was
acquiring an importance altogether
new in the life of the nation. At the Board of Education there was
Sir Robert Morant s policy; in Ireland Sir Antony MacDonnell s,
at the Admiralty Sir John Fisher s. And it was this
policy of the
head of the department which alone counted; the successive
Ministers had been simply the Parliamentary mouthpieces of
these great men of action. Parliament, it is true, revolted against
the three, and it was indeed this revolt which made the names of
Fisher, MacDonnell, and Morant so well known. But there were
other secret dictators whose action was the more powerful be
cause no one spoke of them. Askwith, the Comptroller-General,
chief arbitrator of the Board of Trade, made it a rule, each time
an industrial dispute was submitted to him, to secure the signa
ture by the parties concerned of a permanent collective contract
in such terms as would obviate future disputes. He thus built up
piece piece throughout the United Kingdom a vast written
by
code governing the relations between employers and employed,1
which if not strictly speaking law nevertheless possessed a very
real binding force. Sir Herbert Llewellyn Smith prepared and
organized the system of Labour exchanges. Sir Ernest Aves did
the same for the Trade Boards. Who outside England ever heard
of these men? And how many Englishmen even heard of them?
Nevertheless, in the background of political life they played a
part probably more important than the great political figures
who
occupied the stage while they worked in the wings.
Thus under a Liberal Cabinet the social creed of the Webbs
though they did not show the least gratitude to the Government
for this triumphed, a doctrine of very different colour from the
official doctrine of the Labour party. The small apartment occu-
1 and Disputes, 1920, p. 137.
Lord Askwith, Industrial Problems
265
pied by the MacDonalds in Lincoln s Inn Fields was crowded at
their evening receptions by a gathering typical of so-called
advanced circles. There were Utopians and philanthropists of
every description, friends of the negro and the Hindu, anti-
vivisectionists and vegetarians, militant labour leaders, revolu
tionaries from the Continent. In Grosvenor Road at the Webbs
the sort of people of whom we have just spoken did not feel
altogether at home. There you would meet mingling with intel
lectual Fabians, high officials, politicians belonging to the most
moderate sections of the House and representatives of fashionable
society. The Webbs had their enemies who accused them of
snobbery. It was a calumny without the slightest foundation. The
uncompromising purity of their doctrine led to the resignation
of one of the most important of the industrial magnates who had
consented to join the governing body of the London School of
Economics. 1 Of all English people they were at bottom the most
remote from snobbery, and the most contemptuous of it. They
pursued methodically and fanatically the end they had proposed
to themselves, to transform the old England of individualism and
laissez faire into an England organized from above. And this
School of Economics which they had founded and of which they
were the guiding spirits was intended by them to train the bureau
2
cracy of a future collectivist England. Every ambitious young
man knew that if he got into touch with them and convinced
them of his ability, they would be in .a better position than any
body else to assist his career and place him where in their opinion
he was best fitted to serve the state. 3 Listen to one of their circle,
the young Keeling, who had asked them to put him on the right
path. When the Webbs advised him to take up his residence in a
working-class constituency, and there undertake political and
above all administrative work, he enthusiastically obeyed, settled
in a suburb of South London, and dreamed of persuading all his
1We refer to Lord Claud Hamilton whose resignation was a protest against a speech
delivered by Sidney Webb at the opening by the Amalgamated Society of Railway Ser
vants of its central offices in London. For the entire incident see Sidney Webb s letter to
Lord Claud Hamilton of October 22, 1910 (The Times, October 23, 1910).
*
For the function attributed to the School of Economics by the Webb group see Hal-
danc s speech at Reading on October 27, 1906, in which he announced his intention to
make the institution a training college in the art of administration for soldiers as well as
for civilians.
8
For the Webb New
s salon see the picture painted by H. G. "Wells in his Machiavelli
(Beatrice Webb appears under the name Altiora), a picture Which, though intended as a
satire, constitutes nevertheless an involuntary tribute to this remarkable woman.
266
LLOYD GEORGE AT THE EXCHEQUER
friends, the Socialist intellectuals of Cambridge, to follow his
example. By God ! we could capture a Borough Council or a

if
Board of Guardians we would shift something. 1 And in his
youthful fervour he gave his thoughts a lyrical note foreign to the
prose of his matter-of-fact teachers. 1 was wondering yesterday
why the devil the world didn t found a religion on Caesar instead
of on Christ. Of course, one feels
instinctively that it couldn t be
done. But to me it also seems that Caesar was a far greater per
sonality Perhaps it
. . . wasn t so incongruous as it was made to
appear by damned Christian scholars. Worship isn t the same
2
thing as prayer.
II LLOYD GEORGE AT THE EXCHEQUER
For all that has been said of the almost revolutionary impor
tance of the legislation passed on Churchill s initiative the
introduction of the principle of the minimum legal wage, the in
stitution of a general system of Labour Exchanges it would be a
mistake to suppose that at the end of 1909 he occupied the centre
of the stage. The very calm with which his two Bills were debated
in both Houses proves that neither the Unionist minority in the
Commons, nor the Unionist majority in the Lords dreamt of
giving battle on this ground.They were occupied in fighting on
a wider front a more dangerous foe. When at the end of 1909
Churchill collected in one volume the speeches he had delivered
on the social question during the past four years he asked the
Radical journalist Massingham for a preface, and the outstanding
passage of that preface is perhaps that in which Massingham sang
the praises not of Churchill s statutes but of the Budget which
Lloyd George, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, had just carried
through the Commons. If it prospers, the social policy for which
3
it
provides prospers too. If it fails, the policy falls to the ground.
In fact, at this date not Churchill but Lloyd George was the popu
lar hero, the mouthpiece of British Radicalism. In his hands the
1
Letter to Mrs. Townsend, July 21, 1908 (Keeling, Letters and Recollections, 1918, p. 31).
2
Letter to Mrs. Townsend, July 6, 1912 (ibid., pp. 125-6).
3
Liberalism and the Social Problem by the Right Hon. Winston Spencer Churchill, 1909;
Preface, pp. xiii-xiv. (The Preface is dated October 26, 1909.)
267
Budget of 1909 became the ram for which the Liberals had been
looking ever since 1906 to batter down the walls of the Upper
House. To grasp the antecedents of this fiscal innovation we must
trace the
history of successive Budgets from the point where we
left it in the last volume when we analysed the first Budget which
followed the peace of Vereeniging.
Between the beginning of 1904 and Sir Henry Campbell-
Bannerman s death, the Budget had been twice presented by
Austen Chamberlain before the Election of 1906, twice by Henry
Asquith after it. But it would be a mistake to conclude that a
sharp line divided Austen Chamberlain s Budgets from Asquith s.
The first Budget drawn up by Asquith on the very morrow of the
General Election merely continued Chamberlain s. But the
Budget of 1907 is already paving the way for Lloyd George s

great Budget of 1909. Austen Chamberlain had been appointed,
we remember, Chancellor of the Exchequer at the remodelling
of the Cabinet which followed his father s retirement in October
1903. His appointment to this important post was a visible proof
to the world that there was no
rupture between Balfour and the
apostle of protection. On the other hand, a species of compact
had been concluded between the Unionist leaders and Joseph
Chamberlain when the latter left the Cabinet. It was agreed that
no departure should be made from the fiscal traditions of the
country until his independent propaganda had eventually con
verted it to
protection. During his two years at the Exchequer,
Austen Chamberlain observed the agreement faithfully. He prac
tised
economy, reducing the naval and military expenditure
while the increase of the civil estimates was slow. The reduction
of the navy estimates in 1905 was sensational, amounting to
3530,ooo, that is about a tenth of the navy estimates for the
previous year. Moreover, he continued to apply strictly the
policy of debt reduction. Even when in 1904 the industrial crisis
produced a deficit he did not touch the sinking fund. The follow
ing year he increased it by a million pounds to pay off within ten
years ten million of the floating debt. Since he refused to touch
the sinking fund he was
obliged to have recourse to taxation to
make up the deficit, but the increases of taxation he submitted
were such as to win the
approval of all parties. An
to Parliament
increase in the duties on tobacco had an intentionally protectionist
aspect and for that reason caused warm debates in the Commons.
268
But it was a tax which
produced very little revenue. Apart from
this Chamberlain sought to raise two sums of two million from
two different sources. On the one hand he put twopence on to
the tea duty. There was
nothing protectionist in this; for the
duty did not protect any home producer and damaged the
colonial producer. On the other hand he
put a penny on to
the income-tax, which returned to the
figure of a shilling in
the pound which it had reached for the first time
during
the Boer War. In peacetime the increase was an
application
of the fiscal policy advocated by the Liberals. The following
year when the economic position had improved and the
Budget showed a large surplus, it was the tea duties which
were reduced to their former figure. The income-tax remained
at a shilling.
In 1906 Asquith followed the same
policy. He reduced the
army estimates, which at the close of the financial year had fallen
by a million and the navy estimates which fell by almost two
million. He added a further million to the sinking fund, and
though an additional three million was placed at his disposal by
the fact that certain bonds of the floating debt were due for
redemption, instead of reducing taxation accordingly, he placed
the sum at the disposition of the Treasury to pay off whatever
portion of the debt it seemed desirable to pay off. He also pledged
himself to combat the practice which had become usual in the
Government departments for many years past of borrowing
money for the execution within a fixed term of years of urgent
public works. From the administrative standpoint it offered the
great advantage of making it possible to carry out these works
by methods more akin than usual to those employed in private
enterprise. But it shocked the financial purists, eager to safeguard
the principle of a consolidated Budget. It also shocked the cham
pions of the sinking fund, who saw a host of private debts accu
mulating against the state, at the very time that the sinking fund
was paying off the public debt. Finally, and this was perhaps the
gravest objection, the practice, when employed by the War
Office and the Admiralty, was regarded by the Radicals as a
contrivance for withdrawing their expenditure from Parliamen
tary control. Asquith satisfied these critics by promising that so
and naval expenditure was concerned, no more
far as the military
loans of this kind would be raised. The income-tax remained at
269
the figure, henceforward regarded as normal, of a shilling, but
the taxpayer was relieved by abolishing the tax imposed in 1901
on the importation of coal, taking a penny off the tea duty, and
almost entirely abolishing the new duties on tobacco imposed
two years before three measures of free trade.
The heavy increase of expenditure involved by the Boer War
had caused serious dissatisfaction in the country and it was only to
be expected that the Unionist Cabinet on the eve of the Election
should do its utmost to show that this inevitable burden had been
temporary, and prove itself

capable of reducing the Budget to its
legitimate size. It was equally natural that the new Cabinet on the
morrow of its
victory at the polls when it had just denounced
at countless
public meetings the extravagances of its predecessor
should concentrate its entire attention when it drew up its first
Budget, on economy, which it carried to the utmost

possible
extent. And
Asquith promised to do even more in future in the
reduction of expenditure, in the repayment of debt*. He added,
however, and in the readjustment of the incidence of taxation
1
.
By these words he raised a further problem, which the Unionist

Cabinet had refused to consider, but which a Radical Cabinet
was obliged to face, the problem of effecting such a reform of
taxation as would relieve the
poor taxpayer at the cost of the
wealthy. At once another question arose. Was it to be the simple
readjustment of a burden whose total amount would not be
increased? Could they hope to effect sufficient economies in the
army and navy estimates to provide for the new costs of a demo
cratic Budget without
increasing, possibly even decreasing, the
amount of taxation? The Opposition speakers expressed their
doubts. The House of Commons said one of them, 2 has com
,
mitted itself to the principles of old age

pensions, of the supplying
of free meals to school children, of a large increase in the cost of
education, and the payment of Members of Parliament. These
schemes all require money We
must attempt to determine a
.
little moreexactly how the problem of direct taxation presented

itself to British statesmen in 1906, before we describe the action
they took to solve it in the years which followed.
1
H. of C., April 30, 1906 (Parliamentary Debates, 4th Series, vol. clvi,
p. 307).
2
H. of C., May i, 1906, W. H. Cowan s speech (Parl. Deb., 4th Ser., vol. clvi, pp.
438-9).
270
Direct taxation in England was based on the income-tax. The

income-tax was not progressively graduated but bore a fixed
proportion to the amount of income taxed, with reductions
for
very small incomes. Incomes below 160 were entirely free of

tax, below ^400, ^500, ^600 and ^700 they were subject to
reductions which became smaller as the income increased. Above
.700 the full which had exceeded a
tax was paid and its rate,
shilling in the pound during the Boer War and was a shilling
when the Liberals took office, remained the same however large
the income. Nor
did the collection of the tax present an inquisi
torial character. Two-thirds of it were deducted at the source in
such a that verification was easy and did not involve a full
way
declaration of the taxpayer s income, unless the latter wished to
make one to prove ms title to the reductions allowed for small
incomes. Nevertheless, the tax constantly increased. Its produce
had exactly doubled during the ten years of Unionist Govern
ment rising from .15,600,000 31,350,000 in 1905.
in 1894 to
Further, in addition to this proportional levy large fortunes were
succession duties which the
subject to the steeply graduated
Liberal Government had introduced in 1894, the year before it
was replaced by a Unionist Cabinet. Since that date the produce
of these succession duties had almost doubled. A French financial
his admiration for the self-sacri
expert writing in 1905 expressed
fice with which the privileged class, a minority increasingly
restricted in numbers on whose shoulders alone the burden of
income-tax falls submits in the public interest to painful and
inevitable ruin, an example which few other aristocracies could
1
.
display
Throughout thegreater part
of the nineteenth century the
income-tax, subject as it was to a regular and finally to an annual
vote of the Commons, had been regarded as a temporary expe
dient. Its rate was moderate and it was employed as an exceptional
resource to defray the cost of a war or solve a temporary financial
difficulty. Its
reduction was promised, it was actually reduced and
it was hoped that one day it might be possible to abolish it entirely.
When Austen Chamberlain introduced the Budget of 1904 he

impdts, Edition 2, 1905, p. 14?
1
Ren Stourm, Systems ginircMx d
VOL VI ii
271
was faithful to this tradition,and held out the hope of future
reductions. But same
at thetime he raised the rate from eleven
pence to one shilling in the pound, and this proportion of a twen
tieth began$ it would seem, to be considered normal. But if the
income-tax were to be a permanent burden of such heavy weight
on the taxpayer it was no longer possible to be content with the
careless method of collection and the rough and ready assessment
which had been tolerated in the past. Problems with which the
legislature had hitherto shown practically no concern became
urgent on the eve of theElection of 1906.
The first of these was the evasion of payment. Though as the
result of measures adopted in 1885 and in 1900 the abuse had
apparently diminished, it still existed on a large scale. Ritchie, the

Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1903, deplored its extent and sug
gested that its diminution would be perhaps the best means by
which the rate of the income-tax could be lowered without loss
of revenue. 1 A committee appointed to inquire into the reform?
which might be effected in the system of collecting the income-
tax explained in detail how this evasion of payment was
practised.
Of 600,000 declaration forms sent to taxpayers, 200,000 were not
returned, and the assessment was made by the Commissioners.
By what method? The Commissioners proceeded gradually
raising the assessment annually until the taxpayer protested and
the number of times they could increase the assessment without
protest measured the distance between the original assessment and
the taxpayer s actual income. 2 When a private business was turned
into a public company and a strict account had to be
given of the
profits made, the glaring extent of the previous frauds was re
vealed. Foreign companies operating in
England practised with
English assistance a host of tricks which enabled diem to evade
3
payment entirely. According to a contemporary estimate the
1
H. of C., April 19, 1904 (Parliamentary Debates, 4th Series, vol. cxxxiii, p. 560).
2
H. of C., April 23, 1903, speech by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Ritchie: One of
the most successful modes of evasion is to make no return of income, the income-tax
payer
preferring to be assessed by the Commissioners. In this particular case my friend saw that
the particular firm, of which he knew had this and the Com
something, adopted plan
missioners had assessed them, I think it was at
something Eke 3,000 or 4,000. My
friend said: "What! 3,000 or 4,000; that is preposterous These people are making
I
gigantic profits." The Commissioner replied "Then, we will make it

"
:
5,000." 5,000,**
my friend said, "put it up to 55,000." The Commissioners acted
upon the advice and
they paid it/ (Parli. Deb., 4th Ser., vol. cxxi, p. 254).
8
For these ingenious devices see an excellent article in the Economist entitled Can
Income Tax be avaded? (Economist, October 8, 1915.) The article discusses the
extremely
inconsistent judgments of English and Scottish Courts in this
respect and the debates on
272
the revenue from these frauds in
loss to
respect of commercial
amounted to a fifth of the amount due. 1 To invest
profits money
abroad, let the income accumulate, invest that income abroad
and eventually bring back the income transformed into capital
was another method employed to cheat the revenue. The com
mittee suggested remedies. Declaration of income should, they
proposed, be made compulsory, the forms be drawn up in clearer
terms and the penalties imposed better adjusted, rendered more
severe, and published. 2 In 1907, 1914, and 1915 the legislature
would actupon these recommendations and even devise addi
tional measures to enforce payment.
These were not the only problems raised by the income-tax.
In 1905 all incomes were taxed at the uniform rate of a twentieth.
This was all very well. But was it in accordance with equity, in
other words with genuine equality that incomes which were the
fruit of the
taxpayer s personal work and those which were not
should pay the same tax? This was the problem of the differen
tiation of incomes. And how could it be maintained that the
principle of equality was observed because the tax bore the same
proportion to the income whatever its size? A tax of .50 on an
income of 1,000 was certainly heavier than a tax of 500 on
an income of 10,000. If there wasi to be genuine equality the
tax must be increased in a proportion in excess of the increase in
the income taxed. This was the principle of graduation As .
regards the income-tax the reductions for small incomes already

constituted an indirect and timid application of the
principle.
Why not apply it more consistently? Attempts had been made
to solve these problems of differentiation and
graduation as re
gards the succession duties, why not do the same thing for the
the latest Finance Bill, 1915, which included provisions designed to render these frauds
impossible, H. of C, November 4 and 17, 1915 (Parliamentary Debates, Commons, 1915,
5th Series, vol. Ixxv, pp. 1856 sqq.). 5 &
6 Geo., 5 Cap. 89: An Act to grant certain
Duties of Customs and Inland Revenue (including Excise), to alter other duties and to
amend the law relating to Customs and Inland Revenue (including Excise) and the
National Debt and to make further provision in connection with Finance (Finance [No, 2]
1 L.
G. Chiozza Money, Riches and Poverty, 1905, p. 13.
2
Income-Tax Committee: Report of the Departmental Committee on Income-Tax, 1905, pp.
v sqq. See also J. C. Stamp, who, writing a little later,
sought to prove by solid arguments
that the abuse did not exist on a very large scale (British Incomes and
Property: The Applica
tion of Official Statistics to Economic Problems, 1916,
pp. 315 sqq.). To these evasions of the
income-tax we must add the evasion of death duties by gifts between the living. For this
form of evading taxation see Galsworthy s novel, The Forsyte Saga. Measures were adopted
in the Budget of 1909 to make the
practice more difficult.
273
income-tax? Already in 1904 when Austen Chamberlain set up
his committee to inquire into the evasion of taxation, Herbert
Samuel and Richard Haldane wanted its scope extended to these
further questions. 1 They were not successful. Chamberlain, hos
tile to the Gladstonian tradition in finance, in so far as it involved
the maintenance of complete free trade, became its champion

when it was
proposed to introduce into British fiscal policy what
seemed a first instalment of Socialism. 2 But after the Election of
1906, when Haldane and Samuel were both members of the
Government, a committee was appointed to inquire into the
problem and Samuel was its chairman. Set up on May 4 it worked
3
quickly and reported on November 2p. The report recommen
ded that the limit /of reductions at the lower end of the scale
should be raised from ^700 to ^1,000 and that a differentiation
between earned and unearned incomes should only be applied to
incomes above .3,000. By combining this degression and
differentiation the first step would be taken to satisfy the advo
cates of a democratic reform of the income-tax. At the same time
the report recommended that the taxpayer should be compelled
to disclose his income, that is to say that the system of a
compul
sory declaration of total income should be introduced into
British legislation.
1
H. of C., March I, 1904, Herbert Samuel s speech (Parliamentary Debates, 4th Series,
vol. cxxx, p. 1360). H. of C., April 19, 1904, R. B. Haldane s
speech (ibid., vol. cxxxiii,
P- 582).
2
H. of C., April 19, 1904 (ibid., vol. cxxx, pp. 560 sqq.). Austen Chamberlain agreed how
ever in reply to two questions by Herbert Samuel to obtain information as to what
steps had
been taken abroad or in the Colonies to graduate the income-tax. Graduated Income-Tax
(Colonies) Return to an Address of the Hon. the House of Commons, dated 11 August, 1904 for
Retitrn showing which of the Colonies have established
systems of graduated Income-Tax, or of
Income-Tax levied at different rates on earned or unearned incomes, or both, with particulars in each
case of the rates of tax and the system of assessment and collection,
June 20, 190$. Further Return
August 1, 1905. Miscellaneous, No. 2 (1905) Reportsfrom H.M. s representatives abroad respect
ing graduated Income-Taxes in Foreign States, April 1905. The report is preceded by an intro
ductory report written by Bernard Mallet, Commissioner of Inland Revenue. The
impression received from reading these two collections is that very little had been
done in this direction by the Colonies and that, if the English Radicals desired to carry
out this reform of the Income-Tax, they must seek their models on the continent of
Europe.
*
Report from the Select Committee on Income-Tax, together with the proceedings of the
Committee, minutes of evidence, and an Appendix. The Committee s terms of reference
were *to inquire into and report upon the practicability of
graduating the Income-Tax
and of differentiating for the purpose of the Tax, between Permanent and Precarious
Incomes .
274
Such were the very moderate conclusions reached by the Com

mittee, but its final suggestion was meaningless unless it contem
plated the eventual adoption of a radical reform. Actually the
report pointed out that once its recommendations had been adop
ted it would be easy to raise later on the rate of tax without affect
ing any taxpayer .whose income was below .3,000 a year. Only
the small minority of wealthy persons would have to bear the
burden of the increase and it was this minority which must there
fore be compelled to disclose their total income. This left the
door open to those members of the committee who had formed
an entirely novel conception of what a Budget should be. It
should not, they held, be content with compelling every citizen
to contribute to the needs of the state in accordance with his
means on a basis of genuine equality. The financial machinery of
the state must be employed to remedy the inequality of wealth,
to make the burden upon the rich heavier, and lighten the burden
upon the poor or more drastically to impoverish the rich and

enrich the poor. It was perhaps prudent not to pronounce cate
gorically against these Radical measures. For if it seemed inadvis
able to attempt their immediate application, the fact could not be
ignored that those members of the committee who advocated

them represented a powerful current of public opinion which
might become formidable. We have already seen the effect pro
duced by Bernard Shaw s attacks on the hypocrisy of a Liberalism
which accepted poverty as inevitable. We have witnessed the
campaign of emotional appeal conducted by philanthropists
against the horrors of sweating. And every play or novel Gals
worthy wrote attempted to shake the confidence of the middle-
class in what it called its morality, a morality whose mainspring
seemed to be the desire for wealth and the instinct of property.
Whence did this Socialistic for equality derive its new
demand
impetus? Had Marx proved a true prophet, and was society
actually witnessing a steady decrease in the number of the
wealthy, the increasing pauperization of the masses? The evidence
gives no support to this view.1 Or was it that a phase of economic
1
According to the extremely detailed calculations of A. L. Bowley (The Change in the
Distribution of the National Income i880-1913, 1920, pp. 16 sqq.) thenumber of taxpayers
275
life which the prices of all commodities were rising, and the
in
price of labour alone lagging behind, inevitably aroused the dis

content of the working classes? But though such an
explanation
would account for the disaffection among the workers, it does
not explainwhy the middle-class intellectuals and philanthropists
made common cause with the malcontents. The causes of the
revolt which was now
gathering strength were of the moral
order. We are witnessing the decay of that Puritan asceticism
which made the proletariat ashamed of its poverty as of a crime
for which it was responsible and the rich
regard their own enrich
ment by work and saving as the fulfilment of a duty. The rich
man now wanted to enjoy himself, to. display his luxury, to make
a splash, and the revolt of the intelligentsia and the workers was
the reply to this ostentation.
The economists supported by statistics these denunciations of
the men of letters. The figures showing the revenue produced by
the Estate Duty, the new tax on inheritances introduced in 1894,
had revealed for the first time the extreme inequality in the distri
bution of the national wealth. 1 And the revelation was made the
more striking by the fact that the introduction about the same
time of a similar reform into the French system of inheritance
made possible an instructive comparison between the two coun
tries in this respect. There were twice as many small estates
(of a
value between ^500 and ^1,000) in France as in the United
with an income of over 160 a year remained during the thirty-three years under con
sideration proportionately the same, the number of manual labourers decreased, the
increase was in the number of small taxpayers whose income was below in other
,160,
words, members of the lower middle-class. For the producing power of this marginal
figure of 160 see the evidence given by Chiozza Money who
appeals to the opinions
already
*
expressed by Marshall before the Select Committee on Income-Tax of 1906 (p. 48).
a week does enable a man to command a fair
>3
quantity of the necessary comforts of
life and to
properly educate his children and so on. I regard that as a sensible line on which
to begin your income-tax scale. Cf. Lloyd George, H. of C.,
April 29, 1909: . . . Income-
Tax in this country only begins when the margin of necessity has been crossed and the
domain of comfort and even gentility has been reached. A man who enjoys an income of
ov er 3 a week need not stint himself and his family of reasonable food or clothing or
shelter. There may be an exception in the case of a man with a
family whose gentility is
part of his stock-in-trade or the uniform of his craft. What a man bequeaths, after all,
represents what is left after he has provided for, all his wants in life. Beyond a certain figure
it also
represents all that is necessary to keep his family in the necessaries of life. The figure
which the experience of seventy years has sanctified as being that which divides
sufficiency
from gentility is from 150 to >i6o a year/ (Parliamentary Debates, Commons, 1909, 5th
Series, vol. iv, p. 505.)
1
See Statistical Abstract for the United Kingdom in each
of the last fifteen years from 1894 to .
1908. Fifty-sixth number, 1909, No. 20.

Classification of the number of Estates and Capital
Value ofEstates or Portions ofEstates liable to Estate
Duty in each of the years ending 31st March,
1900 to 1909 (Extricatedfrom the Annual Report of the Inland Revenue
Department).
276
50,000 were three times as
few.
Kingdom. Estates exceeding
Estates whose value exceeded 200,000 or 250,000 were four
times as few. Socialist propaganda could not fail to make capital

1
of such figures. Towards the end of 1905 a little book was pub
lished entitled Riches and Poverty which made a profound impres
correc
sion. Though its figures have subsequently undergone
2
3
tions of detail their substantial accuracy has never been seriously
contested. The author, a Socialist named Chiozza Money, proved
that almost half the total income of the United Kingdom was in
in the
the hands of a ninth of the population, more than a third
hands of only a thirtieth part, and that over half the capital
of the
nation belonged to a seventieth part of the population. He con
cluded that the fundamental social problem was the distribution
of wealth, that if the poor were to be enriched at the cost of the
wealthy, a public maternity
fund established, popular education
and old age pensions in
developed, workmen s dwellings built,
troduced at the state expense the system of national finance must
of
be completely transformed. He advocated the total abolition
duties on articles of consumption, with the exception of alcoholic
drinks. He also advocated the ultimate nationalization of

the rail
the Estate
ways and mines. But they must begin by reforming
4 of the graduated Succes
Duty and Income-Tax. The highest rate
sion Duties did not at exceed 8 per cent. It must be raised
present
the income-tax, a distinction should be
to per cent. As regards
16
made for incomes under 1,000 between earned and

unearned
until for
incomes, and above 1,000 the tax should be graduated
25,000 it reached a maximum twelfth, or
incomes above of a
successors (Econo
1
Paul Leroy-Beaulieu, Les Fortunes en France, d apres les declarations
Ao& 1903, vol. ii, pp. 154 sqq.).
mists Francais ,-, A in
2
L G Oiiozza (now Sir Leo) Money, Riches and Poverty. The first edition appeared
in Consult also another work by
October 1905 and the work reached its loth edition 1911.
the same author, The Nation s Wealth: Will itEndure? 1914-
3
A G Sir Josiah Stamp, British Incomes and Property,
Pigou, Wealth and Welfare, 1912;
Arthur L. Bow-
The Application of official statistics to Economic Problems, Ed. I, 1916; the War,
Product : An of National Income; Before
ley The Division of the of Industry Analysis
IQIQ also The Change in the Distribution of the National Income 1880-1913, 1920.
and xxi, pp. 27? sqq. bee his
* L G Chiozza
Money, Riches and Poverty, chap, xx
evidence before the Committee of 1906, pp. 35 sqq, esp. pp. sqq., also
4<5
A
pendixJNo
12, pp. 257 sqq. Was there no danger
of finally reducing the sum of national wealth and
Chiozza did not think so and in a little book published
discouraging the producer? Money
in 1914 with the title National Wealth, Will it Endure?
he attempted to prove that tfie only
the character of production.
effect of the fiscal legislation he urged would be to change
of the poor
The purchasing power of the wealthy would be diminished, that greased
of articles
The production of luxury articles would therefore decrease but the production
of utility would be correspondingly stimulated.
277
pound. Philip Snowden, who gave
is. 8d. in the evidence before
the committee on behalf of the Labour party, proposed a different
system, though inspired by the same spirit.
The existing assess
ment of the income-tax should not be altered, but in addition to
the ordinary tax a super-tax should be imposed on all incomes
above .5,000, differentiated and graduated, which would in the
case of very large incomes reach the figure of seven shillings in
the pound over a third. The reform, he pointed out, could
not fail to be popular since only 10,000 taxpayers would be
1
affected.
Under these circumstances we can imagine the curiosity with

which the public awaited the Budget of 1907. When Asquith pre
sented it in the Commons on April 18, 1907, the House was
crowded. Not only were the benches reserved for members full,
but the public galleries were packed. The American Ambassador
was present, and the Prince of Wales. Asquith s speech did not
disappoint his audience; he was enthusiastically applauded.
He
began by announcing for the past financial year, a surplus of
5,139,000. It was due in part to the economies which had been
effected, chiefly on the army and navy, on which less had been
spent than the estimates had provided for,

in part to the excellent
yield of taxation, partly due to the industrial boom. For the

finan
cial year 1907-1908, if the present taxes were retained, they
might expect a surplus of .3,433,000. What should they do in

view of this fact? Increase the sinking fund? Certainly. Reduce
taxation? Not necessarily. For the whole territory of social
reform had still to be conquered. Large sums had been spent
since 1870 on public education. It remained to provide for the
aged poor by granting them pensions from the state. For this
reform which would be undertaken in 1908 the necessary funds
must be raised. Raise them by protective duties, said the advo
cates of Tariff Reform. The Government however while retaining
1
See Philip Snowden s evidence
before the Committee of 1906, pp. 1910 sqq. See
and Keir Hardie s similar scheme Appendix No. 5, p. 237. See further
especially p. 113,
Philip Snowden, The Socialists Budget, 1907 alsoA Few Hints to Lloyd George. Where is the
Money to come from? The Question Answered, 1909.
278
the duties on sugar, tea, and coffee, for all classes must contribute
to the national purse, intended to find the money without tamper
ing with free trade, and the excellent financial position enabled
them do so without increasing the existing taxes or imposing
to
any new ones. Asquith did indeed, in accordance with the recom
mendations of the committee of 1906, reform the income-tax,
but only to distribute the burden better, not to increase it. Below
.2,000 a distinction would be made between earned and un
earned income, the tax on earned income being reduced by 3d.
in the shilling, a reduction which would, according to Asquith s
estimate, in an average year cost the treasury .1,250,000. The
loss would be made good by a steeper graduation of the Estate
Duty on estates of over 150,000 in value, and by a super-tax on
estates whose value exceeded .1,000,000. Thus by a circuitous
route the Government introduced the principle of a super
tax, which Philip Snowden had advocated before the com
mittee, applying it for the moment to death duties not to
income-tax. On balance there would be a surplus of 1,500,000
for the financial year 1907-8. It would be applied to the
sinking fund. Next year the surplus would be used to

constitute a fund with which to launch the new system of old
age pensions.
The Budget of 1907 was criticized by the Tariff Reformers,
who wanted the duties on sugar and tea reduced. It was a reform
they had always promised the electors, to compensate for the
establishment of duties on imported articles of manufacture. 1 And
the Labour members made the same demand. not relieve Why
in this way working masses instead of the members of the
the
professional classes, as was done by the differentiation in the

taxation of small incomes? 2 But both were heard without atten-
1
H. of C, May 13, 14, 1907 (Parliamentary Debates, 4th Series, vol. cbcdv, pp. 651 sqq.
805 sqq.).
2
H. of C., May 13, 1907. J. N. Barnes speech: The free breakfast table had again been
relegated to the dim and distant future ... in order that the man with 2,000 a year might
be relieved of a contribution which would in each case have provided the old age pensions
upon the scale they were asking for them. . . . This Budget was a mere pandering to the
City clerk and the small gentry, who thought themselves superior persons and took their
vol. clxxiv, pp. 680-1). Cf. H. of C., May 14. 1907,
politics from the Daily Mail" (ibid.,
J. R. MacDonald s speech: At the present time, the working classes whose incomes aver
aged 70 were paying something like 48,000,000 to the National Exchequer. There
was not a sensible man in the House who would not say that that basis ought to be nar
rowed. It worked out at 2s. in the pound income-tax. If they considered the final utility of
2s. in the pound to a man whose income was anything between 15$. or i a. week, and
279
tion byapathetic benches. The protectionist amendment was
rejected by three hundred and seventy-six votes to a hundred and
eight, and only fifty-four Labour members voted against the
second reading of the Budget. It was however plain that their
arguments had not been without effect when the following year
Asquith presented his third Budget.
The financial position remained excellent. The financial year
1907-8 produced a surplus of .4,723,000. For the financial year
1908-9 on the basis of the existing taxation a surplus of ^4,901,000
might be expected. How should it be employed? Asquith traced
the outline of a comprehensive system of old age pensions to be
provided exclusively by taxation which his Cabinet intended to
submit to Parliament and which would cost according to official
estimates .6,000,000. It would not be put into operation until
the last quarter of the financial year 1908-9; and the million and
a half set apart for it in 1907 would be sufficient for that
quarter.
A round sum of .3 ,500,000 remained to be found. It was roughly
disposal, when a number of
the equivalent of the surplus at their
minor alterations had been effected in next year s taxation. If
Asquith had remained faithful to the principles he had laid down
the previous year he would have applied his
surplus for the cur
rent financial year to the sinking fund, while
employing the
following year s surplus to defray the cost of the old age pensions.
But he stated that in his opinion since the conclusion of the Boer
War the country had done enough towards paying off the national
debt and he proposed to make use of the whole or almost the
whole surplus to reduce the taxes on articles of consumption.
The duty on sugar was accordingly reduce4 by 2s. 6d. a hundred
It was
weight. necessary therefore in 1909 to devise some new
sources of revenue unless one could reckon in
perpetuity on sur
plusesof several millions without increase of taxation. But would
be possible to continue much longer
saving on the navy esti
it
mates? And would the industrial situation

always remain so
satisfactory? A slump had set in since the end of 1907.
worked that out, they got an equivalent in final utility to a man whose income was 5,000
of probably something like 2,000. At the present time the income-tax
upon the working
classes was a tax What the Chancellor had to discover
upon life, not upon property. . . .
was now to remove all taxes upon life and place them
upon property. (ibid., vol. clxxiv,
pp. 825-6.)
280
point in the history of British finance that Lloyd

It is at this
George comes upon the scene. Out of courtesy the honour of

presenting the Budget which he had drawn up had been left to
Asquith. But now that he was Prime Minister he was no longer
Chancellor of the Exchequer and it was the task of his successor
Lloyd George to defend in detail the clauses of his Budget. Lloyd
George had also to introduce the Bill dealing with old age pen
sions, which was as it were the counterpart of the Budget, since
it was to come into operation on January I, 1909, and therefore
the cost must be defrayed for one quarter by the Budget passed
in the spring of 1908. In the normal course this would have been
the duty of John Burns, the President of the Local Government
Board. But in 1907, though promising that the Cabinet would
introduce a Bill dealing with the subject in the near future, he had
accompanied the promise with so many adverse criticisms of the
principle it would embody, that it would probably have been a
gratuitous provocation to the Labour members if the Govern

ment had put him in charge of the Bill. 1 Lloyd George supplanted
him, as a year later Churchill would supplant Herbert Gladstone
and Burns himself when the Trade Board Bill and the Labour
Exchanges Bill were introduced. Thus the Old Age Pensions Bill,
though put into shape by the permanent officials at Asquith s
orders before Lloyd George became Chancellor of the Ex
chequer, seemed to the nation and the entire world as in a sense

his work.
The question of old age pensions, when in 1908 the Govern
ment took it in hand, was ripe and more than ripe for settlement.
As we have already seen it had been the subject of lively debates
before the Boer War. 2 Forgotten while the war lasted, from the
moment peace was restored it had been one of the most insistent
demands of the working class. Every year the Trade Union Con
gress passed a motion demanding a national system of pensions.
In 1903 a parliamentary committee accepted with a few reserva-
1
H. of C, May 10, 1907 (Parliamentary Debates, 4th Series, vol. dxxiv, pp. 523 sqq.).
The Times in its account of tie sitting put the following words into Bums mouth: *He
hoped he would have the honour of working out the details/ But they are absent from the
official report.
2
See my History of the English People, vol. v, pp. 233-6.
28l
1
tions the plan proposed by the committee of iSpp. The candi
dates at the election of 1906 who did not include old age pensions
in their programme were very few, the Unionist candidates
merely adding the reservation that for financial reasons the ques
tion could not be dealt with until the basis of taxation had been
widened by the establishment of a tariff. On the morrow of its
election the new House of Commons had passed unanimously a
motion in favour of the scheme, 2 arid in November a deputation
from the trade unions urged Campbell-Bannerman and Asquith
to give effect to their wishes. The Budget of 1907 promised a Bill
for 1908. In September the Trade Union Congress expressed its
dissatisfaction that the Bill had not been introduced in 1907 and
demanded the payment, on January I, 1909, of pensions of at
least five shillings a week to all
persons aged sixty or over .
No further delay was possible. The publication in 1908 of a

memorandum dealing with the German system of old age pen
sions provided by
compulsory insurance and the system adopted
by New Zealand of pensions provided by the State was a mere
3
formality. Everyone knew that the Government had already

made its choice and that any system involving the payment of
contributions by the workers was condemned in advance. A
circular addressed in
January to the friendly societies asking for
their advice was equally an empty form. The Government had
already laid its scheme before Parliament when on June 15 the
replies of the friendly societies, two-thirds of which were un
4
favourable, were published.
The system adopted by the Cabinet was not that advocated by
Charles Booth and accepted
by the trade unions a pension paid
by the State to all men and women without distinction who had
1
See Report and Special Report from the Select Committee on the
Aged Pensioners
Bill together with the
proceedings of the Committee, Minutes ofEvidence, Appendix and
Index, 1903.
2
H. of C, March 14, 1906. O Grady s motion (Parliamentary Debates 4th Series, vol.
cliii, pp. 1330, sqq.).
3
Old Age Pensions
(New Zealand and Germany) Return to an Order of the Honourable the
House of Commons, dated 1 June, 1908, for Copy of a Memorandum
of the Old Age Pensions
scheme in force in New Zealand and the Scheme
of Insurance against Invalidity and Old Age in
force in the German Empire, June 1908. See further for the preparation of the Bill, the official
documents published in 1907 with the title Old Age Pensions. Tables which have been
pre
pared in connection with the question of Old Age Pensions, with a preliminary Memorandum (the
memorandum contains a useful historical sketch of the question). Cf. William Sutherland
Old Age Pensions in Theory and Practice, with some
4
Foreign Examples, 1907.
Circular Letter issued by the
Chief Registrar to the Principal Friendly Societies with reference
to the
proposal Non-Contributory Scheme of Old Age Pensions, with an Abstract of their replies
thereto, 1908.
282
reached a certain age. It was the system in force in New Zealand,
which granted pensions only to those who could prove that they
did not possess an income in excess of a certain figure that is to
say, who could prove their poverty. Moreover, the Government
scheme was more timid than the scheme in force in New Zea
land. In New Zealand pensions were given from the age of sixty-
five, in Britain they would not be given before seventy* In New
Zealand to receive a pension of ^18 a year a man must not have
an annual income exceeding ^34. In England he would receive
only 55. a week that is to say, .13 a year and to receive it he
must not have an income exceeding .26. In New Zealand per
sons with an income of more than .34 were not totally excluded
from the benefit of the scheme. For every pound of income above
.34 they would lose a pound of the pension, so that it was only
when an income of .52 was reached that a man lost all claim to
a pension. The British Government gave nothing to anyone who
had an income oi^pver ^26. Moreover, whereas in New Zealand
an aged married couple received each a full
pension, provided
their totalcombined income including the pension did not exceed
2^78, the British scheme proposed to grant them a joint pension
of 7s. 6d. instead of the los. they might have expected. In New
Zealand, apart from restrictions of nationality and residence, the
applicant for a pension must not be a lunatic or an habitual drunk
ard nor within a certain period have been sentenced to imprison
ment. In all these points the English followed its Australasian
model. But it added two further demands. To receive a pension
the applicant must prove that his poverty was not due to the
fact that he habitually failed to work according to his ability,
opportunity, and need*. Nor was he allowed to add the pen

sion to any Poor Law relief of which he might be in receipt.
Indeed, he was excluded from the pension if he had received poor
relief since January i, 1908. As in New Zealand the Act would, to
all intents and authori
purposes, be administered by the national
ties. The
pensions would be paid by the State not by the local
authorities and though the examination of claims was entrusted
to local committees elected by the borough, district and county
councils, the central Government would have a representative,
the pensions officer, on each of these.
By employing the closure, the instrument which for some years
past had hastened legislation so considerably, the discussion of this
283
Bill of twelve was rendered extremely rapid. Begun on
clauses
June 13 the debates inboth Houses occupied only thirteen sittings.

The House of Commons was not even given time to discuss all
the clauses. On July 3 1 the debates ended and the Old Age Pen
sions Act1 became law on August I.
But the rapidity of the debates was not due solely to the un
flinching application of the closure. The Opposition put up no
serious fight. It was feeble and timid. An amendment introduced
by the House of Lords which restricted the operation of the

statute to seven years deserves only a passing mention. It was an
absurdity which the Commons swept aside. In the Commons

Unionist speakers were content to reiterate, as they did on every
possible occasion, their propaganda for tariff
reform. The indus
trial crisis, then at its height, encouraged their hopes. Unless the
funds were provided by a tariff, they argued, the cost of the new
legislation could not be met. But they had themselves promised
their constituents old age pensions. And Unionists and Liberals
alike were afraid of the working-class electorate. The only amend
ments introduced into the Act, the effect of which was to extend
its
scope and therefore render it more costly, were made by the
Government under pressure from private members, Unionist as
well as Liberal. The clause which reduced the joint pension of a
married couple was deleted. Were they to discourage matrimony?
In imitation of New Zealand a sliding-scale of pensions was
introduced. It was unfair that the workman who saved and in
return for his regular subscriptions received from his union or
friendly society a pension slightly above los. a week that is,
.26 a year should be penalized by the State for his economy by
exclusion from the benefits of the Act. For an income of ^21 a
year the full pension of 5$. a week would be given, for an income
below .23 i2s. 6d., a pension of 4s.; below 26 5s. od., 35.;
below ^28 iys. 6d., 2s.; below .31 los. od., is. Finally, the
clause, which refused a pension to a recipient of poor relief was
seriously modified in the course of debate. Only paupers lodged

in the workhouses were excluded from the
pension; persons in
receipt of outdoor relief were entitled to the full pensidn, and
even those in the former category were excluded only until
1
8 Edw. 7. Cap. 40: An Act to provide for the Old Age Pensions (Old Age Pensions Act,
&
1908). Modified in certain details by I 2 Geo. 5, Cap. 16: An Act to amend the Old Age
Pensions Act, 1908 (Old Age Pensions Act, 1911).
284
December 1910 unless Parliament should decide otherwise. In the
interval the commission appointed to inquire into the Poor Law
would have reported and might suggest a different solution.
Thus, during the session of 1908 two social reforms of the first
magnitude were carried by Asquith s Cabinet the Act limiting
the working day in mines, which for the first time laid down the
principle
of a legal limitation of hours for adult male workers, and
the Old Age Pensions Act, which affirmed the principle of the
right to live by recognizing the right of those too old to work to
receive a pension from the community. 1
But the ministerial account also showed a debit side. The House
of Lords was wrecking a third Education Bill, the final attempt
to reach a compromise between the conflicting claims of the
Anglicans and Catholics on the one hand and of the sects on the
other. It had also thrown out a Licensing Bill, which the Govern
ment had introduced to satisfy the temperance reformers and
restrict the drink traffic, and a Land Valuation Bill for Scotland,
which, by enabling the Government to ascertain the value of

land, would have enabled it later on to tax increments of value.
On these three questions the House of Lords had beaten the
Government and the Government had taken the defeat lying
down. The Unionist Press was jubilant. It glossed over the awk
ward fact that in the sphere of social reform concessions had been
made to democratic opinion which more than counterbalanced
these three victories. It sought to make its readers believe that the
Liberal Cabinet owed its continued existence to the toleration of
the Tories, who were willing to let it remain in office so long as
SirEdward Grey was at the Foreign Office and the imperialist
members of the Cabinet took care that the national defences were
not weakened. If the Government desired to appeal to the coun
try on the Irish question, on the question of the denominational
school, or on the question of temperance reform, let it do so by all
To complete the enumeration we must mention the Act for the protection of children
1
towhich we have already referred, pp. 82-83 n. (8 Edw. 7, Cap. 67: An Act to consolidate
and amend the Law relating to the Protection of Children and Young Persons, Refor
matory and Industrial Schools, and otherwise to amend the Law with respect to Children
and Young Persons [Children Act, 1908]).
285
means. The Unionists were certain of victory and it was evident
that the Liberals were of the same opinion because they dared not
join battle.
Was it tolerable that the Cabinet should continue to shrink
from taking up the challenge thus flung in its by the House of
face
Lords, the Unionist party, and the Unionist Press? The more
cautious Liberals, headed by Asquith, were perhaps disposed still
to postpone the conflict, but the two leaders of the democratic
wing of the Cabinet, Lloyd George and Churchill were impatient

to take action. In September Churchill paid a long visit to Lloyd
1
George at his country house at Criccieth. They formed their
plan of campaign which they partially disclosed to the public in
two violent speeches, delivered, the one by Lloyd George at
Liverpool on December 21, the other by Churchill at Birming

ham on January 13. We
cannot declared Lloyd George, con
,
sent to accept the present humiliating conditions of legislating by

the sufferance of Lord Lansdowne. This nobleman has arrogated
to himself a position he has usurped a sovereignty that no king
has claimed since the ominous days of Charles I. Decrees are
issued from Lansdowne House that Buckingham Palace would
not dream of sending forth. We
are not going to stand any longer
the usurpation of King Lansdowne and his Royal consort in the
Commons, But the Liberals had the choice of the moment to
deliver their attack, and Lloyd George let it be understood that it
would be the presentation of the Budget. Three weeks later
Churchill spoke even more plainly. 1 do not, of course, ignore
the fact that the House of Lords has the power, though not, I
think, the constitutional right, to bring the Government of the
country to a standstill by rejecting the provision which the Com
mons made for the financial service of the year. That is a matter
which does not rest with us, it rests with them. If they want a
speedy dissolution, they know where to find one. And, for
. . .
my part, I should be quite content to see the battle joined as

speedily as possible upon the plain simple issue of aristocratic rule
against representative government, between the reversion to pro
tection and the maintenance of free trade, between a tax on
bread and a tax on well, never mind. Everyone was in expec
tation everyone, Liberals and Unionists alike and the more
anxiously because the hand on which the young Chancellor of
1
A. MacCallum Scott, Winston Churchill in Peace and War, 1916, p. 10.
286
the Exchequer was staking his career seemed at the opening of
to play. The day was past when
particularly difficult
January 1909
the Liberals had only to denounce the extravagant policy of the
late Government and blame the imperialism of Chamberlain and
his followers for the fact that the Budget had increased by one
half between 1895 and 1906 rising in ten years from -100,000,000
to .150,000,000. For two years Asquith had contrived to keep
in the neighbourhood of the latter figure but the speech he
delivered when he presented his last Budget in 1908 was a warn
ing to the taxpayer that the democratic neo-liberalism of the

twentieth century had little in common with Gladstonian
Liberalism, that the Cabinet did not intend to govern on the
cheap and that a large increase in the amount and in the sources
of expenditure was inevitable. A year later Lloyd George did but
develop what his Premier had said in 1908 in more veiled lan
guage.
In the first methods had made it possible

place Admiral Fisher s
until 1908 to effect an annual reductionof the navy estimates with

out weakening the navy, possibly even increasing its strength. In
1908 the navy estimates for the first time had shown an increase.
But it had been slight and signified merely that since every pos
sible economy had been made, the estimates must automatically
rise, even if no new expenditure were undertaken. Germany how

ever was speeding up the construction of her navy. The Conser
vative Press redoubled its attacks on Fisher, and called upon the
Government to recognize frankly the necessity for strengthening
the fleet. The First Lord of the Admiralty, McKenna, was con
vinced. He was faced in the Cabinet by the opposition of Lloyd
George and Churchill but he overcame it and it was agreed that
he should be granted the necessary credits for a new programme
of naval construction. Lloyd George took his revenge by making
it clear that he would raise the money
by direct and graduated
taxation; in other words that he would make the wealthy pay
for the new vessels. Even so, McKenna s demand was an initial
difficulty which he had to face in drawing up his Budget. When

the Navy Estimates were presented to Parliament in accordance
with custom two months before the Budget as a whole, they
287
WINSTON CHUHCHILL AND LLOYD GEORGE
amounted to .35,124,700, an increase of almost three million
over the estimates of 1908. And it must be borne in mind that, if
the demands of the were to be satisfied, they would
imperialists
continue to increase in subsequent years. For the four Dread
noughts was proposed to lay down would be far from com
it
others would be laid down in accordance with

pleted when four
their programme. From that moment the country would have
to bear a double cost, the cost of finishing the former and the cost
of building the latter.
In the second place, the policy of social reform had proved by
the beginning of 1909 far more costly than had been expected a
Pensions Bill was drafted. It had
year earlier when the Old Age
been calculated that 500,000 persons would be entitled to a pen
sion, but 480,000 had established their
claim by January I,1 and
the
130,000 further claims were expected. In Ireland especially,
number of claims had been exceeded by an incredible
expected
it would appear, one person out of every twenty-
figure. There,
five was seventy years of age or over, as against one out of every
either because the immigration of the
eighty-eight in England,
an enormous
youthful element of the population did in fact leave
of or because it was more difficult to
proportion aged people,
verify the and income of applicants or because control was
age
more lax.2 In any case the old age pensions would
intentionally
prove far more costly than had been estimated.
And there was
more to come. When he introduced the Old Age Pensions Bill,
the Bill was only
Lloyd George had explained that in his intention
a beginning .3 Immediately after the close of the session he had
in Germany, where the attention he received
spent three weeks
was a flattering proof of the important position he already occu
Continent. He had inquired into
pied in the eyes of the entire
the practical working of the social legislation which was Bis
marck s gift to his country, in particular of the laws of insurance
against sickness and invalidity.
Would it not be possible to en-
pensioners in the whole of the United Kingdom amounted
1 The number of to 669,352
in 1910, 907,461 in 1911, 942,319 in 1912, 967,721 in 1913 and 984,131 in I9H (Annual
the Poor Law, the Unemployed
Reports of the Local Government Board, Part I, Administration of
Workmen Act, and the Old Age Pensions Act). See further for the application of the Act Old
Age. Pensioners and Aged Pauperism Memorandum, 1913.
2 For the Administration of the Statute in Ireland see the debate in the House of Com
mons occasioned by the complaints of two Irish members who maintained that the Statute
was applied too stringently. (Parliamentary Debates, Commons, 1910, 5th Series, vol. xv,
pp. 663, sqq.).
ft of C, May 25, 1908 (ibid., 4th Ser. vol. clxxxix, p. 871).*
288
graft
a similar system with contributions from the workers into
the system of non-contributory old.
age pensions now being set
up in England? When he gave the Press an account of his visit he
his regret that nothing had yet been done in Germany
expressed
to grapple with the problem of unemployment. He evidently
1
intended to grapple with it himself. At Criccieth he had discussed

those questions in his conversations with Churchill. When he
drew up the Budget of 1909, he was looking for sources of
revenue sufficiently extensive and sufficiently elastic, to enable
him to introduce, possibly in 1910, a system of insurance against
all the risks incident to labour, not only the poverty of old age,
but sickness, invalidity, and unemployment.

Nor was this all. He must contemplate further expenditure.
Had we solved the problem of unemployment if we accepted it
with resignation like a natural fatality and were content to com
pensate its
victims? And was it a commendable method of dealing
with the problem to provide even the unemployed with work
whose utility was doubtful? Must not the State step in where
private enterprise had failed and carry out
a comprehensive plan-
of public works which would exploit the resources of the coun
try? The automobile industry was making rapid strides. It had
originated in France. But at present England with her 55,000 cars
was proud to find herself at the head of Europe. During the pre
vious half century the roads had been increasingly abandoned for
the railways. Today the contrary process was taking place. The
old road system of Great Britain required complete renovation.
The existing roads were too narrow, their corners dangerous.
They must be made to skirt the towns instead of traversing them.
Their material was no longer suitable. And a number of entirely
new roads must be made. Moreover, a Commission on affore
station appointed in 1906 had reported in January that in its
opinion two million and a half acres in England and Wales were
suitable for planting with trees, six million acres in Scodand, five
hundred thousand in Ireland. This would involve heavy expen
diture for forty years, but the benefit would then begin to be felt
and meanwhile work would have been provided every year for
almost forty thousand men. And once we had entered upon this
path, why not go further? Why
not solve the problem, so serious
in Great Britain, of rural depopulation, by a number of different
1
The Times, August 27, 1908.
289
undertakings by creating experimental farms, improving the
breed of livestock, developing agricultural education, and en
couraging co-operation, providing better means of transport,
splitting up large estates into small farms, draining marshes and
cultivating waste land?
Such were the needs for which the Chancellor of the Exche
quer had to make provision and which he explained to the Com
mons when he introduced his Budget on April 29, 1909, in a
speech of formidable, even gargantuan proportions. He spoke
for four hours and a half and towards the end his strength seemed
on the point of giving way. He announced the introduction at
the same time as the Finance Bill of a Development Bill, which
would confer upon the Government the necessary powers to
embark upon those practical and costly undertakings of which
we have just spoken. 1 In all, he made provision for an expenditure
of .164,350,000 instead of the .154,350,000 of Asquith s Budget
the year before. The increase was a large one, and
expenditure
would certainly continue to increase. On the one hand he was
proposing expenditure which according to his own programme
must rise every year and a Budget of .2,000,000, double the
Budgets before the Boer War, was in sight. On the other hand
when Asquith drew up his three Budgets he had benefited by an
industrialand commercial boom which produced a large surplus
every year. It had therefore been an easy task in 1908 to reduce
taxation while increasing expenditure. The situation was now
very different. Since the end of 1907 the industrial situation had
steadily deteriorated and in April 1909 there were no signs of
recovery. The financial year, ending on March 31, had left a
deficit of .1,502,000. And it would have been even greater, if
the duties on
alcoholic liquors had not risen
enormously. For the
importers, foreseeing a large increase in the duties in the 1909
Budget, had made haste to import before the new financial year
opened supply the entire demand of 1909. The
sufficient stock to
Treasury estimate of the .550,000,000 thus received in advance

would have to be deducted from the receipts for 1909-10.
In short to defray an expenditure which exceeded 164,000,000 .
the Treasury had in hand ^148,390,000 of

receipts. That is to say,
1 An
Act finally passed: 9 Edw. 7 Cap. 47: An Act to
promote the Economic Develop
ment of the United Kingdom and the Improvement of Roads therein
(Development and
Road Improvement Funds Act, 1909).
290
there was a deficit of almost .16,000,000. How was it to be made
up And where would
? the Chancellor of the Exchequer discover
sources of revenue whose yield would progressively increase to
keep pace with the increased expenditure foreseen in future years.
Must he enlarge the basis of taxation by returning to protection?
That was the Unionist solution. The Liberals boasted that they
could solve the problem without abandoning free trade. Their
solution was the new system of taxation proposed by Lloyd
George.
In the first
place, dealing with the direct taxes Lloyd George
repeated^ Asquith previous declaration that the income-tax must
s
no longer be regarded as a temporary expedient but as the centre,

the sheet-anchor of British finance. And he announced his inten
it more
tion to graduate steeply. For incomes below ^500, an
allowance of los. would be granted for every child below sixteen
years of age, and on all incomes below ^2,000 the tax would be
lowered to pd. instead of is. On the other hand on incomes above
.3,000, it would be raised to is. 2d. Finally, above .5,000 in
comes would be liable to that super-tax which Philip Snpwden
had urged upon the committee of 1906 and which the committee,
without actually recommending it, had recognized to be feasible.
Its rate would be 6d. in the for all incomes above .5,000, with
.
a further 3d. for incomes above .6,000, to be levied on the

amount of income which exceeded ^3,000. This meant a rate of
is. 6d. in the for an income of .9,000, is. yd. for an income
-
of . 1 8, ooo. A similar reform of the death duties was effected.
The lower limit of the Estate Duty remained unaltered, i per cent
on an estate above .100 in value. Nor was the maximum rate of
15 per cent raised but it was reached quicker, by a steeper ascent,
at .1,500,000 instead of .3,000,000. The legacy and succession
duties were raised from 3 to 5 per cent when the legatee was a
brother or sister, or the descendant of a brother or sister, and to a
uniform rate of 10 per cent when die legatee was a more remote
relative. The exemption from the I
per cent duty hitherto granted
to heirs in the direct line was and
abolished. In future such heirs
even the husband or wife of the deceased would be exempt from
legacy or succession duties only when the value of the property
291
did not exceed ^15,000. The duty on settled estates was raised
from i to 2
per cent. To prevent evasion, gifts between the living
were liable retrospectively to death duty, if they had been made
less than five
years before the testator s death. In the third place the
stamp duties were raised very considerably on all sales and Stock
Exchange transactions and in the latter case steeply graduated.
The reform of the income-tax would produce an additional
~3, 500,000, the reform of the succession duties an additional
^2,850,000, the increase in the stamp duties an additional

^650,000.
We now turn duties on articles of con
to the indirect taxes
sumption. Liberals and Unionists were agreed in demanding the

reduction and eventual abolition of the duties on tea, cocoa, and
coffee. For they increased the cost of
living for the working man.
Nor were they protectionist in character.-But it was not an easy
matter at a moment when such a large amount of additional
revenue must be raised while preserving intact the system of free
trade to push fiscal heroism so far as to
deprive the State of a
source of revenue to which it had been
long accustomed. Lloyd
George therefore did not reduce these duties though he refrained
from raising them. But there were other indirect taxes taxes on
articles of
consumption of which the zealots of a democratic
Budget did not desire the reduction still less the abolition. The
English Radical party supported by the leaders of Nonconformity
was the party of temperance reform. It therefore wished in the
moral interest of the lower classes to raise the duties on alcoholic
drinks, both the customs and the excise duties. 1 am all for making
it as
easy as possible Lloyd George had declared a few months
,
earlier, Tor the people to get every commodity that is good for
them. I am all for making as difficult as the access of the
possible
people to any commodity that injures them. That is the Liberal
1
policy.
A liberal policy? That we can hardly term it. In any case it
was not a policy calculated to attract the masses. And the House
of Lords felt that they were
improving the prospects of the
Unionist party at the polls when
they opposed it. Dissatisfied
with the results of the Unionist
Licensing Act of 1904, the Liberal
Cabinet had carried in the Commons in 1908 a new
Licensing
Bill, which obliged the Government at the
expiration of fourteen
1
Lloyd George. Speech at Liverpool, December 21, 1908.
292
years to
reduce the number of licensed houses so that their number
1
bore a fixed proportion to the population of the locality. The
Lords had thrown out the Bill. By the Budget of 1909 the
Government would avenge its temporary humiliation at the

hands of the Upper House. The licensing system was radically re
formed and a general tax on licences imposed which when collec
ted in full, for a relief was granted in certain cases, amounted to
half the annual proceeds from the sale of drink. The duties on
beer and spirits were raised. For these measures in the view of the
Government would benefit at once the treasury and public health.
They would produce, if the treasury estimates were correct, an
additional revenue of .4,200,000. Smokers would help to make
up the deficit by paying an increase of more than double on the

tobacco duties an additional revenue of .1,900,000; owners of
motor-cars by an increase of the motor-tax and the duty on
petrol would provide an additional ^T 1,600,000, of which a fixed
proportion would be spent on improving the roads. The total
revenue raised from these various sources would amount to
.6,700,000.
A third category of taxes remains which we might be temp
ted to pass over lightly since this entire aspect of the great Budget
of 1909 has proved in less than fifteen years a complete and dismal
failure. We must however dwell upon it, for of all Lloyd George s
proposals those we have now to relate aroused the most intense

feeling at the time, kindled the anger of his opponents to its
utmost pitch, and were received with the greatest enthusiasm by
his supporters. When after explaining the new taxation he in
tended to impose upon the drink tfaffic, Lloyd George paused
and then continued 1 now come to the question of the land he
was interrupted by a tempest of applause.
We must clearly understand in what respect his democratic
finance differed from the doctrine of an orthodox Socialist. The
year before, Philip Snowden had harassed the Government with
speeches biting as aquafortis in which he denounced its financial
and social policy. Neither the Budget of 1908 nor the Old Age
Pensions Act met with his approval. Neither answered his defi
nition of good legislation, legislation which made the rich poorer
1 For thedetails of this extremely complicated Bill see H. of C., February 27, 1908,
Asquith speech. (Parliamentary Debates, 4th Series, vol. clxxx, pp. 73 sqq.). For the effect,
s
evidently slight, of the Act of 1904, see Statistics as to the Operation and Administration of the
Laws relating to the sale of Intoxicating Liquor in England and Walesfor the year 1907.
293
1
and the poor The Budget of 1909 might well constitute,
richer .
if not a measure of satisfaction to Snowden, for he was one of

those men whom you can never satisfy, at least
the first effort to
satisfy him. It did not however amount to a declaration of war

upon the rich, unqualified, and indiscriminate. It was indeed war
against the extremely wealthy on it whom
imposed the new
burdens of the heavy supertax" on income and the increase in the
succession duties. Lloyd George explained however that he did
not intend in the strict sense to supertax them that is, to make
them pay more than their fair proportion of the taxes but only
to make them pay sufficient to satisfy the principle of genuine
equality. It was but equitable that the wealthy should pay a pre
mium for the security the State guaranteed their wealth. It was
only fair that they should contribute a large share to the social
expenditure of every kind undertaken by the democratic State.
For a well-educated and well-fed populace was a more solid foun
dation on which to build the national wealth than a semi-barbar
ous proletariat. It was against the monopoly of the landowners
that he summoned the rest of the nation to revolt. In the large
towns and in the mining areas the landlord became wealthy
without any action on his part at the cost of the workers and as a
result of their work. In the mines the capitalist risked his
capital,
the miner only his life. The landlord was certain to gain. In the
towns, all who needed land for factory, shop, or lodging, were
his victims. A little later Lloyd George attempted to arouse the
sympathy of a proletarian audience for the lot of the proprietor of
one of the great fashionable West End shops exploited by his
landlord, the Duke of Westminster.
2
This denunciation of the great landed estates was no novelty. It

was a tradition which dated from the birth of modern Radicalism.
Ricardo had worked out a theory of ground rent according to
which it increased automatically without any expenditure of
labour whereas wages always remained at the same level, and
1
H. of C., May 25, 1908: The condition of the people remained practically the same
the old age pensions scheme would make no great change in the distribution of wealth.
No rich man was going to be a penny poorer than he was to-day by this scheme (Parlia
mentary Debates, 4th Series, vol. clxxxix, p. 828). May 4, 1909: The extreme Socialist
School . . are charged with wanting to make the rich poorer and the poor richer. I have
;
never denied that that is my purpose. My
object is to make the rich poorer and the poor
richer, because there is no other way under heaven by which you can make the poor
better off except by making somebody poorer than they are. (Ibid., 5th Ser., vol. iv,
p.
1073.)
a
Speech at Limehouse, July 31, 1909.
294
LLOYP GEORGE AT THE EXCHEQUER
profits continually
diminished. There was therefore no reason,
he concluded, why the capitalist and the worker, comrades in
misfortune, should not combine to tax the landlord for the benefit
of society as a whole. His disciple,James Mill, had pushed the
suggestion a little further, John Stuart Mill further still and the
American, Henry George, had carried it to the furthest possible
point.
He wished to introduce a single tax on land alone equal to
the value of landed property. It amounted to expropriation.
Taxation of the landlord would thus provide a radical solution
of the social problem
by liberating the capitalist and the labourer
at the same time. A quarter of a century earlier his formula had
made a great stir in England. Lloyd George was beginning to
apply it by introducing some new taxes. The first, the unearned
increment value tax, was a tax of 20 per cent on an increase in the
value of land, to be ascertained every time it changed hands. The
second, the determination of lease tax, was a tax of 10 per cent on
the increased value of property let out on lease, calculated at the
renewal of the lease. The third, the undeveloped land and ungot-
ten minerals tax, was roughly a tax of a halfpenny in the pound
on the value of land which its owner did not cultivate or subsoil
whose mineral wealth he did not exploit. These taxes, particularly
the last, would not be a serious burden. And they would be further
reduced by the fact that they could not produce their full return
until a general valuationof the land and a revision of the survey
had been carried out which would itself cost money. The treasury
expected these taxes to bring in .500,000 during the year 1909-
10. But Lloyd George probably regarded them as a mere begin
ning. They could be increased later until, in the course of time,

they produced a revolutionary effect.
The additional receipts would amount therefore to a total of

.14,200,000 to meet an expected deficit of .15,772,000. By
taking .3,000,000 from the sinking fund the Budget would be
balanced with a surplus of almost .500,000. A new era was
opening in the history of British finance. It was admitted that
expenditure must inevitably increase, constantly and normally.
But the Government refused to meet it by adopting tariff reform.
New land taxes were instituted which might later become an
important source of revenue. Moreover they came under the
heading of direct taxation which, together with the taxes on
alcoholic liquors, remained as in the days of Gladstone, the foun-
295
dation of the fiscal system. We
have seen that at the end of the
nineteenth century the moment was at hand when the yield of
direct and indirect taxation would be equal. Now
the balance in
clined to the side of direct taxation. 1
Lloyd George had expected the Budget to exasperate his oppo

nents. Stunned for the moment as by the blow of a club, they
soon recovered and a protracted and bitter struggle began. From
April 30 until the beginning of November, Parliament was in
almost continuous session. Other measures were indeed passed
during this session of 1909 an Act which granted the native 7
Indians genuine representation in the councils of British India,
an Act conferring an autonomous constitution upon a united
South Africa, the two Statutes which set up the Trade Boards and
Labour Exchanges, an Act extending the powers of the local
authorities as regards the housing of workmen and town
plan
2
ning and a Land Act for Ireland. But the Budget alone was the
subject of embittered warfare between the parties. The Opposi
tion secured only very inconsiderable amendments whose details
it would be tedious to describe, the substitution for the tax on
ungotten minerals of a tax on royalties (the change gave the

treasury an additional revenue of .175,000), a reduction of the
new duties on licences and stamps, and a
larger reduction of the
sinking fund, ^3, 500,000 instead of .3,000,000. But in spite of
such modifications of detail it was Lloyd George s Budget which
was passed in November. It could not well have been otherwise.
The Government s majority in the Commons, though reduced
by a number of unfavourable by-elections, was still too strong to
1
In 1900-1 the direct taxation represented 49.4 per cent of the total revenue. In 1901-2
and 1902-3 the war Budgets made it increase faster than the indirect. It represented res
pectively 52.5 and 52.4 per cent of the total revenue. During the subsequent years it fell
below 50 per cent, but that proportion was definitely exceeded in 1905-6: 50.3 per cent.
In 1906-7 the proportion was 5 1. 4, in 1907-8, 51.1, in 1908-9, 52. 6per cent. Lloyd
George s
great Budget brought it to 56.4 in 1909-10, and 1910-11. In 1911-12 it was 57.3, in
1912-13, 57.6. (Bernard Mallet, British Budgets 1887-1913, p. 493.)
9 Edw. 7, Cap. 44: An Act to amend the Law relating to the Housing of the Working
2
Classes, to provide for the making of Town Planning Schemes, and to make further pro
vision with respect to the appointment and duties of County Medical Officers of Health
and to provide for the establishment of Public Health and Housing Committees of
County
Councils, 1909.
296
be destroyed even by a combined revolt of all the Irish and
Labour members. And there was no reason to fear such a com
bination. The Labour members liked a Budget in which they saw
the of a Socialist legislation. The Irish did not like it. On
first fruits
the question of Protection they shared the views of the Unionist,

not the Liberal party. They were also very hostile to the clauses of
the Budget which imposed crushing duties on alcoholic drinks.
They voted against the Bill on the second reading. They abstained
from voting when on November 4 the Bill passed its third read
ing. But it was passed by 379 votes
to 149. They knew that neither
their opposition nor their more cautious absention could endanger
.the Bill Neither did they wish to endanger it. Whatever they
might think of the measure itself, they understood what an excel

lent weapon it was against the House of Lords. And this was a
consideration which in their eyes eclipsed all others.
In fact, it is not upon these impassioned debates, noisy scenes,
and applications of the closure with the protests to which they
gave birth that we must fix our eyes. It was in the country that
the real battle was fought out. A league was formed against the
Budget and an opposition league to defend it. Campaigns of
oratory were conducted on a large scale. The offensive was
launched by the Unionists. But these meetings of business men
with a great landowner often in the chair were not calculated to
frighten the Government. Their organizers were playing
into
Lloyd George s hands by proving to the entire country that the

Liberalswere faced by a combination whose object was to defend,
not the interests of the nation, but those of a particular class.
The Government replied and with slashing onslaughts. Lloyd
George and Churchill, particularly the former, carried the war
into the enemy s camp. Lloyd George began by attacking Lord
Rothschild, who imprudently made himself a prominent figure
as a leader of the campaign. There are countries where they have
made perfectly clear that they are
it not going to have their
dictated merely by great financiers, and* if this sort of thing
policy
goes on this country will join the rest of them/ 1 But soon, faithful
to his tactics, he portrayed the entire nation, artisans, men of
business, manufacturers, merchants, and engineers in alliance
against the intolerable yoke of
the great landowners, the Dukes
as he became accustomed to call them. The ownership of land
1
Speech at Holborn Restaurant, June 24, 1909.
297
is not merely an enjoyment, it is a stewardship. It has been
reckoned as such in the past, and if the landowners cease to dis
charge these functions, the time will come to reconsider the con
ditions under which land is held in this country. No country,
however rich, can permanently afford to have quartered upon its
revenue a class which declined to do the duty which it was called
upon to perform/ 1 He was accused of driving capital from the
country by the panic his Budget had provoked. A

ridiculous lie !
On the contrary, after the introduction of the Budget the position

of trade was recovering from long months of depression. Every
month the imports and exports were increasing. Only one stock
has gone down badly; there has been a great slump in Dukes/ 2
A fully-equipped Duke Lloyd George calculated, costs as
,
much to keep up as two Dreadnoughts; and Dukes are just as

great a terror and they last longer/ 3 Why this harping on the
Dukes? It was not simply because the Duke of Westminster, the
Duke of Rutland, and the Duke of Northumberland were taking
part in too many public meetings. It was also because the Dukes
were the heads of the peerage; and the entire House of Lords was
the target of these insults, each one a challenge. If the Lords dared
to throw out the Budget they would make a revolution and the
people would soon take that revolution out of their hands. Their
own folly had raised the question: Should five hundred men,
ordinary men, chosen accidentally from among the unemployed,
override the judgment the deliberate judgment of millions of
people who are engaged in the industry which makes the wealth
of the country? 4
We may well believe that at the beginning neither the Liberal
nor the Unionist leaders desired to press the issue to such extremi
ties.
Asquith and Sir Edward Grey and Lord Lansdowne and
Arthur Balfour were prudent men inclined to moderate courses.
But a large number of their followers in both camps were of more
warlike stuff. On the side of the Government were Lloyd George
and Churchill. On the side of the Opposition was the host of
Tariff Reformers: Joseph Chamberlain,
crippled and invisible,
penned from his retirement at Highbury a summons to resistance.
The entire Unionist Press re-echoed his
appeal. The Times alone
1 at
Speech Lirnehouse, July 30, 1909.
2
Speech at Newcastle-on-Tyne, October 9, 1909.
3
Ibid.
4
Ibid.
298
for a time preached caution; 1 and there was even a moment when
the great demagogue who directed both The Times and the Daily
Mail seemed shaken by the force of Lloyd George s fervid elo
2
quence and showed a disposition to support his policy. Lord
3
Rosebery attempted his favourite role of mediator. It was too
late. Already Lord Lansdowne no doubt with reluctance had
bowed to the will of his party4 and Balfour would shortly be
persuaded to commit himself irrevocably. The alternative he
5
declared was the Budget or tariff reform. It was for the peoplfe to
choose. And it was for die Lords to invite their choice by throw
ing out the Budget.
10
In what terms was the issue stated? The Liberals claimed that it
was a question of constitutional law. The constitution, they
argued, gave the House of Lords no right to reject the Budget.
But England does not possess a written constitution. On what
then was this alleged limitation of the Lords* prerogative founded ?
On a number of resolutions passed by the Lower House in
which the House of Lords had acquiesced and to which custom
had accordingly given the force of law. Two of these passed under
the Stuarts, the former in 1671, the second in 1678 declared in
substance that it was the right of the Commons to initiate legisla
tion granting supplies to the Crown, and that the Lords had no
right to amend such Bills.

If, however, these resolutions denied that the House of Lords
had the right to amend a Money Bill sent up from the Commons,
they did not deny that the Lords had the right to reject it en bloc.
On the contrary, a resolution passed by the Commons in 1689
1 The Times, July 5, September n, 1909.
2
The Times, August 4, Daily Mail, August 5, 1909.
3
Speech at Glasgow, September 10, 1909.
Speech at Bowood, August 7, 1909. With reluctance we have remarked. See the entry
4
in Sir Almeric Fitzroy s diary for November 16, 1909 I sat next to him at luncheon at the
:
Travellers and thought him. nervous and ill at ease; further, from some remarks he let
fall about the Irish Land Bill and the Housing Bill, I could not fail to gather that he enter
tained grave misgivings upon the course he was about to take. There can be no doubt,
in fact, that it has been forced upon him by the clamour of the Unionist Press, and the
apprehensions of Tariff Reformers. He has not had a free choice in the matter; Whig
scruples have been ruthlessly sacrificed to Tory passion and the petulance of wire-pulling
demagogy.* (Memoirs* vol. i, p. 386.)
5
Speech at Birmingham, September 24, 1909,
299
that on the morrow of the Revolution which had overthrown
is,
the Stuarts, expressly recognized their right to do so. The House

of Lords had attempted to amend a Money Bill, the House of
Commons had refused to give way. A conference had been held
between representatives of the two Houses at which the represen
tatives Commons declared that the Lords when presented
of the
with a Money Bill had only one option, that of adopting it or of
rejecting it wholly, without alteration or amendment,
if it might
be to the relief of the taxpayers . Subsequently the Lords had
made frequent use of this right to reject Money Bills. Often, both
before and after the Reform Bill of 1832, they had thrown out
Money Bills sent up by the Commons, imposing customs or
excise duties. But the day came when the Lords had the impru
dence to carry too far the exercise of a right tolerated by the
House of Commons and suffered or seemed to suffer a further
curtailment of their prerogative.
Until that date it had been the custom to include in the Budget
only those annual taxes renewed every year by the Commons.
When to balance the Budget it was necessary to alter a permanent
tax, a special Act had to be passed, distinct from the annual
Budget. This happened in 1860. The Government passed through
the Commons a Bill abolishing the duties on paper. The Lords
threw it out. This amounted undoubtedly to amending the
Budget though it was by an indirect method. The Liberals pro
tested vehemently. They denied that the Lords, because they were
permitted to reject Money Bills which did not directly affect the
composition of the Budget, could claim the right to interfere in
any way whatsoever with the latter. The Liberal Government,
postponing for a year the alteration of the excise duties for which
it had asked,
adopted the following year the novel procedure of
incorporating into the Finance Bill every tax without exception
and introduced into this complete Finance Bill the abolition of
the excise duties on paper. The Lords were therefore faced with
a dilemma. They must either
adopt the daring course of rejecting
the Budget as a whole, which was the only method
by which
they could protest against the abolition of the duties on paper. Or
they must accept the entire Budget including the abolition of the
duties on paper. In the former case the Government would
appeal
to the country and obtain its
support against the Lords. In the
latter case the conclusion would be drawn that the Lords re-
300
nounced not only the right to amend the Budget but the right to
it.
reject
Actually, the Upper House never displayed subsequently any
disposition to reject
the Budget sent up by the Commons at the
close of the not even in 1894 when the Liberal Cabinet
session,
effected by means of the Budget a reform of the succession duties
nothing short of revolutionary and which the Government had

decided to incorporate in the Budget for the very purpose of
overcoming the opposition which the Lords offered to all their
measures of reform. In consequence, it was taken for granted that
in the sphere of finance the British constitution was not bi
cameral but unicameral. It became the custom to levy the new
taxes set down in the Budget from the day when they were passed
by the Commons without waiting for the assent of the Lords.

Twice in 1907 and again in 1908 Arthur Balfour had expressly
recognized that the House of Commons alone possessed authority
in the sphere of finance. 1 Was the doctrine therefore beyond
question? To Balfour s imprudent declarations, which he now

found extremely embarrassing, the Unionists could oppose an
equally imprudent declaration to the contrary made by Lord
Spencer in 1904 when he was leader of the Liberal party in the
House of Lords. 2 The fact of the matter was that for more than
two centuries the House of Lords had never thrown out a Budget,
and only circumstances of exceptional gravity could justify the
breach of a custom so firmly established. It was a question of
1
H. of C., June 24, 1907: *. . . We all know that the power of the House of Lords thus
limited, and rightly limited as I think, in the sphere of legislation and administration, is still
further limited by the fact that it cannot touch those Money Bills, which if it could deal
with, no doubt it could bring the whole executive machinery of the country to a stand
still. (Parliamentary Debates, 4th Series, vol. clxxvi, pp. 929-30.) Speech at Dumfries,
October 6, 1908 : It is the House of Commons, not the House of Lords which settles
uncontrolled our financial system.
2
H. of L., July 29, 1904: We all know that we in this House cannot amend a Money
Bill, but we have a perfect right to discuss it and a full right to throw it out if we so will.
(Parl. Deb. 4th Ser., vol. cxxxbc, p. 5.) When on July 20, 1908, the Old Age Pension Bill
was read a second time in the Lords and Lord Wemyss had proposed to wait, before dis
cussing it, for the report of.the Commission which was inquiring into the Poor Law, Lord
Rosebery pointed out that the Bill was a Money Bill, adopted almost unanimously by the
other House and that an amendment at this point would amount to rejecting it. But if
he advised against rejection, he did not regard rejection as unconstitutional, as is proved
by the fact that in a speech delivered a week later he said that if he were to move the
amendment which would commend itself most to his mind it would be to refer the Bill
to the country at large. It was no part of the programme of the Government in the last
election*. Lord Lansdowne also advised against the rejection of a Bill which was really a
fin an rial Bill, and which had been
supported by colossal majorities in the other House*.
He concluded that the wisest course (he did not say the only constitutional course) was
301
of constitutional law, and weighty
expediency rather than
in support of the more daring
arguments could be pleaded
course.
For conditions had changed since the custom first arose. Could
it be maintained that the position occupied by the House of
Commons at the beginning of the twentieth century was the

same as it had been in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,
when it asserted the right to exercise an entire and unfettered
control over a grant of supplies which the Sovereign might em
ploy against itself and the country
which it claimed to represent
in its
dealings with the Crown? The real sovereign, de facto if not
dejure, was no longer the King

but the electorate and the inten
tion of the Commons when it asserted its financial omnipotence
was to prevent any restriction being placed upon the revenue it
desired to exact from the taxpayer to distribute it lavishly among
the majority of the nation. And, on the other hand, was it
pos
sible any longer to differentiate between
among Money Bills
those which while having a financial aspect were concerned with
1
objects outside the sphere of finance
and those for example,
the annual Budget whose sole object was to provide the Govern
ment with the revenue it required for national purposes ? Budgets
whose authors inquired not how much money each taxpayer
to proceed to the discussion of the clauses. He was content to express the hope that the
Government would not too severely press the privilege of the House of Commons .
What followed was this. When Lord Cromer brought forward an amendment restricting
the operation of the Act to seven years, the Lord Chancellor observed that the amend
ment bore a financial character, and therefore violated the privileges of the Commons. In
spite of this the amendment was carried, but
when the Bill was returned to the Commons
the Speaker pronounced it inadmissible for the same reason. The House of Lords finally
submitted though not without protests. (H. of L., July 20, 1908; Parliamentary Debates,
4th Series, vol. cxcii, pp. 1379 sqq.; July 28, 1908, ibid., vol. cxciii, pp. 1073, 1077-8.
H. of C., July 31, 1908, ibid., p. 1970.)We must however bear in mind that if the doc
trine that Money Bills were unalterable was pushed very far, the Lords right to reject
them was not contested. See further H. of L., March 25, 1908, Lord Loreburn s speech
(ParL Deb., 4th Ser., vol. cbcxxvi, p. 1382) also the debate between Lord Loreburn and
Lord Salisbury on the subject of this declaration. H. of L., May 24, 1909 (ParL Deb.,
Lords, 1909, 5th Ser., vol. iv, pp. 929 sqq.).
1
See on this point the admissions made by John Morley himself, H. of L., November
29, 1909. The bare legal right (to reject the Budget) has not been denied. Some, no doubt,
and I do not know that I would quarrel with them, would argue that the bare legal right
the transformation of a legal right into aspects of moral duty by. reason of the wildest
proposals of a demented House of Commons. (Parl Deb., Lords 1909, 5th Ser., voL iv,
pp. 1140-1.) The opposition speakers exhumed declarations made by Gladstone during
the conflict of 1860 which admitted the Lords right to amend the Budget if provisions not
strictly financial were illegitimately embodied in it*. July 5, 1860, May 16, 1861 (ParL
Deb., 3rd Ser., vol. clix, pp. 1433-4; vol. clxii, p. 2131).
302
had got, but how he had got it and expressly proposed to make
the rich poorer and the poor richer were not Money Bills in the
strict sense, but social legislation of the most far-reaching charac
ter whose object was to redistribute private wealth. The House of
Lords might therefore with perfect fidelity to the logic of the
constitution consider itself entitled to take the opportunity of
declaring that under these novel circumstances, though it could

not revive the claim to amend the Budget, since it had acquiesced
in the formal resolutions of the Commons which
deprived it of
that prerogative, it was at least free towhole, thereby
reject it as a
making use of a right recognized by a resolution no less formal

and which had not been revoked even in 1861.
We must therefore consider the House of Lords as
placed,
when presented with the Budget of 1909, in the same position in
which it had been placed when presented with numerous Bills
sent up to it by the Lower House since the Election of 1906. It
had acted wisely that is to say, it had not damaged its position
when it rejected the Education Bill of 1906 and the Licensing Bill
of 1908. Onthe other hand, it had shown equal wisdom in accept
ing the Trade Disputes Bill of 1906 and the numerous measures
of social reform which had followed it, the Workmen s Insurance
Bill, Day Bill, the Trade Boards
the Eight-Hours Bill, and the
Labour Exchanges Bill. Would it not be prudent to adopt the
same attitude towards the far-reaching measure of social reform
which called itself the Budget of 1909? If it threw out the Bill, a
chamber in which the influence of the great landowners was
regarded as predominant would be accused of doing so, to defend
not the national welfare but the pecuniary interests of an order, a
particular class. It would incur the responsibility of plunging the
public finance into chaos, nine months after the financial year had
opened. It would also expose itself to the charge, plausible in a
country where the constitution was entirely customary, of

attempting an almost revolutionary coup d etat. But, on the other
hand, Lloyd George by his violent diatribes was doing his utmost
to drive the House of Lords into a desperate course. He wished
apparently to make it plain to the entire world that if the House
of Lords passed the Budget it would accept a severe defeat, a
marked humiliation. He was deliberately perhaps forcing the
Lords to take an heroic decision. It was taken. A motion by Lord
Lansdowne which declared that the House of Lords Vas not
VOL Vlis
303
bound to give its adherence to the Finance Bill so
long as it had
not been submitted to the judgment of the
country was carried
on November 30 after six days of serious and solid debate,
by 350
to 75 votes. The House of Commons
replied on December 2 with
a declaration, carried
by 349 votes to 134 that the action of the
Upper House amounted to a breach of the Constitution and a
usurpation of the rights of the Commons .
304
CHAPTER II
The Constitutional Crisis and the

House of Lords
I FROM THE DISSOLUTION OF 1909 TO THE DEATH
OF EDWARD VII
f I IHE course of events had causedKing Edward considerable

I anxiety. By no means well disposed to the Budget of 1909
A he was no less dissatisfied with the uncompromising atti
tude of the Unionists. By thus meeting intransigence with intran
sigence they were surely playing the Radicals game? He was
believed to have inspired Lord Rosebery s speech in September
in which he had pressed caution upon the Lords. It was known
1
that in the beginning of October he had invited the Prime Minis

ter to Balmoral and asked his permission to have an interview
with the Unionist leaders to urge a compromise upon them.
Asquith had given his consent, either because he was in favour of
a compromise, or, knowing that the Unionists had already made
up their mind to refuse an amicable solution, he wanted to make

them shoulder the entire responsibility for the coming struggle.
And in fact when the King on his return to London met Lord
Lansdowne and Arthur Balfour, he could effect nothing. 2 When
therefore after the vote of the Lords, Asquith asked him to dis
solve Parliament, he was no doubt more annoyed with the Con
servative statesmen who had hurt his vanity by refusing to let
him play the part of peacemaker than he was with the authors of
the objectionable Budget. He therefore made no objection to de
claring Parliament dissolved on December 15. The General Elec

tion would follow in January. What under the circumstances was
the choice before the voters? A Unionist victory would mean the
rejection of the Budget. It would also mean what admittedly was
the only alternative method of providing for the enormous in-
1
Comte d Haussonville Les flections et la situation politique en Angleterre (Revue des
Deux Mondes, February 1, 1911, vol. ccccxxxvii, p. 560).
*
Sir William. Angus. Speech at Newcasde-on-Tyne, October 9, 1907. Sir Almeric
Fitzroy, Memoirs, October u, 1907 (vol. i, pp. 384-5). Sir Sidney Lee, King Edward VII
(voL ii, pp. 667-8).
305
CONSTITUTIONAL CRISIS AND THE LORDS
crease in the National expenditure, abandoning the tradition of
free trade and applying the principles preached by the Tariff Re
formers. A victory of the Liberals
with their Labour and Irish
allies would mean the approval of the Budget by the electorate.
But it would involve more than this. For it would be necessary to
further encroachment by
prevent by an express enactment any
the House of Lords upon the prerogative of the new House of
Commons. We shall not assume office/ declared Asquith at a
and we shall not hold
public meeting held on December 10,
office, unless we can secure the safeguards which experience
shows
to be necessary for the legislative utility and honour of the party
of progress.
If the Unionists expected a full swing of the pendulum, a com
verdict and a striking revenge for
plete reversal of the popular
their defeat in 1906, they were disappointed. What actually
1
occurred was a return after the abnormal Election of 1906 to a

normal situation. But the Conservatives did not experience once
more the triumphant days of 1895 and 1900. They reconquered
the south-eastern counties, those Home Counties which they had
province and which they had
as their lost only
always regarded
by accident in 1906. It was a gain of 44 seats. But it was their sole
victory. Their gains in London barely sufficed to give them a

slight majority. The result was the same in the eastern, midland,
and western counties. The industrial north remained faithful to the
Liberals. Lancashire, which from hatred of Home Rule had gone
over to the Conservatives in 1895 and 1900, had apparently, in
itsfear of Chamberlain s protection, returned permanently to its
old allegiance. In these northern districts there was only a slight
decline in the number of Liberal seats as compared with 1906:
more than four-fifths were won by candidates supporting the
Government. In Scotland the Liberal party, whose domination
had been threatened at the close of the nineteenth century, was
once more sovereign. With the exception of a solitary seat all the
Welsh constituencies returned Liberal candidates. As always,
Ireland returned a over eighty Nationalists, inflexible ene
little
mies of the House of Lords. On balance, the Opposition secured

only 273 seats as against 397 held by the supporters of the Govern-
1 For
the forecasts very vague and often markedly divergent of the forthcoming
election see Sir Almeric Fitzroy, December n, 14, 1909; January 4, 19, 1910 (Memoirs,
vol. i, pp. 390, 391, 392).
3O6
1909 TO THE DEATH OF EDWARD VII
ment that is to
say, the Government had a majority possibly
the more solid because it was smaller of 124. 1
But the Conservatives found consolation by analysing the com
position of they had obtained a
this majority. In England itself
majority of seats, 239 as against 191 held by the Liberals, 34 by

the Labour party and i by the Nationalists, that is to say a total of
no more than 226 members on the Government side of the House.
It was upon Scotland, Wales, and Separatist Ireland that is to
say, upon
all those
portions of the United Kingdom which were
not English, that the Government s majority rested. A somewhat
similar position had resulted from the General Election of 1835,
two years after the overwhelming Whig triumph of 1833 which
might be compared with the Liberal victory in 1906, and six
years later the Conservatives had secured a decided majority in
the Commons. And the situation presented another feature even
more serious for the Government. In the new House the Unionists
gained 100 seats, the Liberals lost 100, and in consequence the
numbers of both parties were equal. The Government therefore
had to depend for its majority upon two parties distinct from the
Liberal though in alliance with it, the Labour party with roughly
40 seats and the Nationalists with some 80 seats. If the Nationalists
were to abstain from voting the Government s majority would
be reduced from 125 to 43 If they voted with the Unionists, its
.
majority would be transformed into a minority that is to say,

in Parliament the Nationalists were masters of the situation.
It was a
paradoxical state of affairs. The Irish, for the reason we
have explained, disliked the Budget. It was only very reluctantly
that they accepted it, for tactical reasons. It was their present to
their friends the English Radicals, for which they in return
would subsequently give them the Home Rule they desired and
in the meanwhile would take the necessary steps to prevent the
House of Lords from withholding it. They lost no time in press
ing their demands home. The most urgent desire of the Govern
ment was to settle the question of the Budget, which had been
hung up for months and opt which it would seem the election had
been held. They would then proceed to deal with the House of
Lords. But it was the Budget which gave the Irish their hold over
1
For a good analysis of the result of this Election of January 1910 see an article by
Captain E. N. Mozley The Political Heptarchy. An Analysis of seven General Elections.*
(Contemporary Review, April 1910; vol. xcvii, pp,
307
the Government. Once the Budget had been safely passed, it
would have a freedom of action which the Irish did not desire it
to possess. John Redmond indeed, a revolutionary well tamed by
have proved more accom
parliamentary methods, might possibly
his own
modating; but he felt his footsteps dogged not only by
party but worse still by those dissidents who
in Ireland were on
the watch for the least sign of weakness on the part of the official
Nationalists. The Irish therefore successfully demanded that be
fore dealing with the Budget, Parliament should pronounce at
least in principle on the question of the House of Lords. What
form exactly did that question take? And in the first place what
was this Chamber whose prerogatives or composition the
Government proclaimed its intention to alter?
The House of Lords, we need hardly point out, did not repre
sent, as did for example the Prussian Herrenhaus, a closed aristo
cracy, a noble caste. Nor is the difference sufficiently
denoted by
the fact that out of the British peerages of 1910 only thirty-two
dated from the seventeenth century, eleven from the sixteenth,
four from the fifteenth, five from the fourteenth and two from
the thirteenth. For in every country in the world hereditary aris
tocracies speedily decay by the extinction of families. The distinc
tive featureof the British peerage was that the old families were
swamped by an ever increasing flood of new peers. Throughout
the greater part of the eighteenth century the increase had been
slow, the number of peers rising only from 153 at the Revolution
of 1688 to 174 at the accession of George in. But we have seen
how for political reasons George III and above all his Minister,
William Pitt, had lavished new peerages. 1 George IV had fol
lowed their example. At his death just before the crisis of the
Reform Bill the number of peers had risen to 326. Once that
had passed a long halt followed, a period which witnessed
crisis
no new constitutional developments. From 1837, the year of

Queen Victoria s accession, to 1865, the year of Palmerston s
death, the number of peers remained practically stationary. From
1 See my History of the English People, vol. i, pp. 193-6.
308
385 it had risen to 400. It was and especially

after the latter date
after the passing of the Reform Bill of 1867, that creations of

became more frequent as the constitution became more
peers 1
democratic. At the end of 1909 there were 544 hereditary peers.
At this rate within a few years, the House of Lords would have a
larger membership than the Commons.
From what sources were these new peers drawn? Large num
bers of them had been members of the Lower House who already
belonged to the old gentle families and whose promotion
to the
peerage did not alter fundamentally

its social composition. There
were soldiers and sailors rewarded for distinguished service to
their country for example, Lord Wolseley, Lord Roberts, and
Lord Kitchener. It is a curious fact that since for many years there
had been no naval warfare, the navy in 1909 was practically un
represented in the Lords.
There were men who filled or had filled
important administrative posts, ambassadors or Colonial gover
nors. There was a small number of lawyers whose presence was
sat as a court of justice. On these
indispensable when the House
occasions the other peers kept away and a few lawyers composed
the entire assembly. Intellectual merit received little recognition.
In 1909 there was not a single representative of literature, art or
science. Lord Leighton, Lord Lister, and Lord Kelvin were dead
and only the name of Lord Tennyson recalled the fact that his
celebrated father had been a peer. But the really striking pheno
menon was the invasion of the House of Lords, more marked
every decade, by representatives of the business world, bankers,
industrial magnates, and proprietors of newspapers. We might
2
1 Tocomplete the membership of the House of Lords

we must add 26 archbishops and
bishops, 44 representative peers of Scotland and Ireland and 5 or 6 life peers. They bring
the total to a figure exceeding 600.We must remember that the titles of Duke and Marquis
had kept aH their old value. (There were 22 dukes in 1909 in place of 20 in 1805, and 21
in 1837; 23 marquises in place of 19 in 1865 and in 1837.) It was the titles of Viscount
and Baron which had been bestowed so lavishly. There were 42 Viscounts in 1909 as
in 1865, 193 in 1837. (For all these
against 21 in 1865, 18 in 1837; 334 Barons as against 207
figures see Vacher s Parliamentary Companion (from 1833).)
*
For this invasion of the Peerage by business magnates see Labouchere s complaint in
the House of Commons as early as 1888 (H. of Q, March 9, 1888. Parliamentary Debates,
3rd Series, vol. cccxxiii, pp. 763 sqq.). Lord Salisbury s Government (1895-1902)
created
50 peers, among them 6 business men (Baron de Worms created Baron Pirbright,
the
banker; H. H. Gibbs created Baron Aldenham, the Canadian railway director;

Donald
Alexander Smith created Baron Strathcona, the banker; Sir John Lubbock created Baron
Avebury, the journalist; Sir Algernon Borthwick, director
of the Morning Post, created
Baron Glenesk; William Louis Jackson, leather and skin merchant later a railway director,
created Baron Allerton. Balfour s Government (1902-1905) created 18 peers, among them
5 business men, a banker M. Biddulph created Baron Biddulph; an armament manufac-
309
have expected Conservative protests against such a debasement
of the governing aristocracy, especially when these creations were
the work of a Liberal Cabinet. And it was surely the strict duty of
the Radical party to denounce this transformation of the Upper
House into a frank plutocracy. But protests were in fact very few.
A speech by Ramsay MacDonald1 found little echo in the Press.
From the opposite quarter the Saturday Review denounced in
December 1905 the double elevation to the peerage of the eminent
Jewish banker Herbert Stern and the popular journalist Sir Alfred
Harmsworth. 2 But the Toryism of the Saturday Review was of an
eccentric quality. Lord Northdiffe s peerage was calculated to
please journalists of every camp.

In 1906 King Edward revolted
created by the new
against the excessive number of peerages
Liberal Cabinet, sixteen in six months not counting the Lord
peerage, and attempted to veto

Chancellor s the elevation to the
peerage of Pirrie, the great Belfast shipbuilder. But Campbell-

Bannerman held his ground. Three years later, Asquith made
Pirrie a knight of Saint Patrick, and it was the turn of the nobility
to revolt. The other knights of the order struck and refused to
take part in the ceremony of inauguration which had therefore to
turer, W. H. A. F. Watson Armstrong, created Baron Armstrong; an ironmaster, Sir

A. J. Forbes-Leith, created Baron Leith of Fyvie; the great Jewish financial magnate,
Herbert Stern, created Baron Michelham (he had been made a baronet six months earlier),
and the banker, E. B. Faber, created Baron Faber; also the journalists Edwin Levy-Lawson,
director of the Daily Telegraph, created Baron Burnham, and Sir Alfred Harmsworth,
director of the Daily Mail, created Baron NorthclifTe. Campbell-Bannerman s Govern
ment was responsible for 21 new peerages, of which eight were given to business men.
James Joicey, mine owner and newspaper proprietor, was created Baron Joicey. A.
"W.
Wills, tobacco magnate, was "created Baron Winterstoke; the Belfast shipbuilder W. J.
Pirrie, created Baron Pirrie J. J. Jenkins, Chairman of the Swansea Metal Exchange,
;
created Baron Glantawe; G. Armitstead, a merchant, created Baron Armitstead; James

Kitson, an ironmaster, created Baron Airedale; the Jewish banker, Montagu Samuel
Montagu, created Baron Swaythling and Alexander Peckover, also a banker, created
Baron Peckover.
1
Speech at Longton, June 27, 1910: *The seven new peers created by the Liberal
Government were an awful warning of what would happen if they voted for the reform
of the House of Lords. Let them look at the list. If he was going to have an aristocrat, he
wanted a genuine aristocrat and not merely a plutocrat. If they were to have men of title
holding even the limited power in the Constitution which the veto resolutions gave, he
wanted men -whom he could respect and not men who had bought their way into the
Upper Chamber by liberally subscribing to party funds The Labour Party would not
allow the new aristocracy to subvert the will of the people. . . .
2
Saturday Review, December 16, 1905: The Adulteration of the Peerage/ But after this
violent outburst the Review was completely silent about the creations of January and June
1906. The National Review, in January 1906 very sarcastic about Sir Herbert Stern s eleva
tion to the peerage, expressed its delight at seeing Sir Alfred Harmsworth made a peer. *A
man of supreme ability. . . . Nowthat he has become a Peer he may turn his attention to
public life. He would be an interesting ingredient in a Cabinet and an admirable head of a
department/
310
1
be omitted. But neither in 1906 nor in 1909 did these incidents
reach the ears of the public. And in the end both the King and the
nobility submitted.
For this capitulation two reasons can be given. The first of

these on which we have already had occasion to remark, 2 is that
the House of Lords was also being made
by another plutocratic
process, the reverse of the former, the
namely that the fact
members of the old aristocracy to repair fortunes damaged by a
diminished rent roll, were engaging in business. Lloyd George
was speaking the language of another age when in his campaign
of 1909 he attempted to direct his hearers indignation against the
landlords alone. The wealthy landowners who lived on the rents
of an urban estate or the royalties of a coal mine were a minority
of their class. The others, owners of arable or meadow land,
ruined under a system of uncompromising free trade by the fall
of prices which had marked the last quarter of the nineteenth
century and crushed by the enormous succession duties imposed
upon them by Sir William Harcourt and lately increased by
Asquith, would have been unable to meet the heavy cost of keep
ing up their estates, if they had not found new sources of wealth
in the great joint-stock companies. A list drawn up in November
1909 by a leading Unionist journal, the Standard* enumerated
thirty-five bankers in the House of Lords. But among them were
a Duke of Buccleuch, a Marquis of Ailesbury, a Lord Fitzwilliam
and a Lord Harrowby. It enumerated thirty-nine captains of
industry but among the number were the Duke of Abercorn,
chairman of the British South Africa Company, the Duke of
Argyll, chairman of two steamship companies, and the Earl of
Shrewsbury, chairman of the Brereton collieries that is to say,
while business men were becoming peers, peers were becoming
business men, so that when the new rich reached the Upper House
they found themselves on familiar ground.

The second reason why the new elevations to the peerage caused
1
Sir Sidney Lee, King Edward VII, vol. ii, pp. 451-2.
2
3
In my History of the English People, vol. v, pp. 15-18.
November 22, 1909.
no scandal was their connection with the system of party organi
zation. In older days two great opposing parties had indeed exis
ted. But discipline was not very strict and both alike consisted of
a loose alliance of great families whose heads fought an election as
private individuals, some in agreement with the Government in
office, others opposed to it. The corruption that existed was prac
tised either by these noble families who bid against each other for
the representation of county seats or by nouveaux riches who
sought to snatch from the former representation of boroughs in
which the number of voters was sufficiently small for their votes
to be purchased en bloc. But little by little as the system of repre
sentation became democratic the parties had consolidated their
organization, had imposed on candidates a collective discipline,

and subjected the electorate to methods of corruption equally
collective. Henceforward politics was a battle between two
wealthy middle-class groups which whenever a costly measure

of social reform was passed submitted with equal resignation,
perhaps with equal lack of enthusiasm, to the demands of the
working ckss, and conducted their struggle, as though perform
ing a ceremony, according to rules accepted by both parties.
The most fundamental of these rules was that either party had
the right to collect sufficient funds to face the next election with
some prospect of success. Wealthy candidates paid not only their
own expenses but the expenses of poor candidates and wealthy
members of the party contributed to the party funds in the hope
of securing not a seat in the Commons but a peerage or at the least
a baronetcy or knighthood1 or one of those decorations whose
number had been multiplied of late years. 2 Possibly there was not
1
H, of C., February 19, 1908. H. C. Lea s Speech:
(
He . . . left out the usual baronetcy
for the Lord Mayor of London and the two knighthoods to the sheriffs for entertaining
foreign potentates at their own expense. From November 1903 to December 1905 the
Tory Party were responsible for the creation of 13 Peers, 16 Privy Councillors, 33 Baron
ets, and 76 Knights: a total of 138 in two years, of which number 36 or 28.1 per cent were
Members of that House. From December 1905 to November 1907, two years of Liberal
regime, 20 Peers were created, 19 Privy Councillors, 33 Baronets, and 95 Knights; total
167, of which 37 or 22.1 per cent were Members of that House.* (Parliamentary Debates,
4th Series, vol. clxxxiv, p. 911.)
2
Arthur Ponsonby, The Decline of Aristocracy, 1912, p. 124: The practice has never
reached the absurd extreme to which it has been pushed in foreign countries, where sol
diers, courtiers, diplomatists, and officers are literally plastered over with decorations, but
they have already become common enough in this country to have lost all distinction.
Only within the last thirty years six new orders, two new decorations and several new
medals (not war medals) have been constituted. The large membership of these four orders
shows there is justification for saying that the craving for this really rather childish form
of public recognition is on the increase. The Victorian Order has some 870 members, the
312
in every case an express agreement to this effect. But when a

wealthy manufacturer or merchant had contributed a large sum
of money to the party funds, the Government could hardly refuse
those who asked for some honour to be given him in return. And
on the other hand when the insistent request of a financier who
wanted to see himself a baron had been granted, he could do no
less than show his gratitude to the party which had made him a
peer by contributing to the party funds in proportion to his

wealth. The Home Secretary and the Patronage Secretary for the
ministerialists, the Opposition leader and Whip for the opposite
party,conducted these negotiations which, during the powerful

wave of democratic feeling expressed by the Election of 1906, in
evitably aroused protests. A
certain Lancashire magnate whose
elevation td the peerage had caused scandal in 1895 and who had
loaded his native town with his interested benefactions, became
on this account the object of such violent local attacks that he
decided to leave the neighbourhood and transfer his gifts to some
other district of England. 1 But if the incident is typical, still more
little was said of it in the
typical is the fact that so papers, and the
equanimity with which on the whole the nation accepted this sale
of honours carried on almost in public. In a country where the
party organization is loose, extremists on the left or right may
successfully agitate against an abuse of this kind; but in England
they were faced by the solid mass of moderate members of both
parties leagued against them to maintain practices equally indis
pensable to both. Lord Robert Cecil among the Tories, Hilaire
Belloc and two or three other isolated individuals among the
Imperial Service Order 475, the Distinguished Service Order 1,650, and the Order of
Merit 17.
Some of the old orders are restricted in their membership: the Garter, the Thistle, and
Saint Patrick include altogether under 70 members but the Bath has been extended to
2,000 members, Saint Michael and Saint George to 1,000, and in addition to these are the
Star of India (291 members) and the Indian Empire (414 not including natives of India).
This makes a great total of nearly 6,800 decorated persons, not counting the recipients of
war medals, the Victoria Cross, the order of St. John of Jerusalem, Volunteer and Terri
torial decorations, orders for "Women, or the vast number who receive ceremonial medals.*
A detailed analysis of all the honours (tides and decorations) bestowed from the beginning
of Asquith s Government in April 1908 to the end of Lloyd George s Government is
contained hi an interesting article by Harold Laski entitled The Prime Ministers Honour
Lists (Nation, July 15, 1922).
1
James Williamson, manufacturer of linoleum in Lancashire created in 1895 Lord
Ashton. This creation, together with that of Sidney Stern, made on its deathbed by the
Liberal Cabinet which was resigning had aroused strong Unionist protests. Lord Lino
leum* was accused of buying his tide by a gift of 100,000 to the party funds. See the
obituary notice of Lord Ashton in The Times May 28, 1930.
t
313
Radicals, attempted in vain to rouse Press and Parliament from
the apathy they had deliberately assumed on the subject. The
in concert with
Speaker, the umpire between the parties, acting
Sir Kenry Campbell-Bannerman and Arthur Balfour contrived
to prevent the question even being raised. He claimed that since
the grant of honours was part of the royal prerogative, to make
the Prime Minister responsible was to derogate from the dignity
of the Crown. 1 Silence fell and the Liberal party continued to
replenish its funds
by manufacturing noblemen with the tacit
approval of the Unionist Opposition.
We
must not then picture England in 1910 as on the verge of
revolution and the House of Lords threatened with violent extinc
tion for throwing out the Budget. The rejection did not provoke
the riotous demonstrations against the peers responsible for it
which had been provoked in 1832 by the rejection of the Reform
the majority of the population both in Great Britain
Bill. After, all
and Ireland was opposed to the Budget on one point or another,
and the House of Lords did not incur any real or profound un
popularity by rejecting it. If there were still old families whose
uncompromising Conservatism protested indignantly against the
growth of the democratic spirit and the debasement of the House
of Lords, they were not numerous, and hidden in the depths of
the country far from arousing indignation they inspired respect.
Other noble families in touch with all the movements of London
and cosmopolitan life might label themselves Tory But their .
drawing-rooms welcomed men of letters, artists, actors, and

journalists of every political complexion. And the vast majority
of the peers were men of fashion averse to serious thought who
liked hunting, racing, sport of every
description, and who, be
cause they shared the taste for open air exercise and the love of
1
The Parliamentary campaign against the traffic -in titles was begun when the great
shopkeeper Whiteley was created a peer, by Hugh Lea, a Radical M.P. who wrote a
letter to The Times denouncing the sale of honours.
(The Times, July 12, 1907. Cf. the
letter signed M.P. in the Morning Post on
July 13, 1907, and G. K. Chesterton s Letter in
the Daily News July 15, 1907.) At the same time the
question was raised in the House of
Commons by Lord Robert Cecil (July 12, 15; Parliamentary Debates, 4th Series, vol.
346 sqq.), but the Leader of the House of Commons and the Leader of
chocviii, pp. 198,
the Opposition asked the House to pass to the order of the
day and the Speaker did as they
requested. Cf. the debate provoked the following year by Hilaire Belloc (H. of C.,
February 19, 1908; Parl Deb., 4th Ser., vol. clxxxiv, pp. 899 sqq.) and Lord s Knolly
letter to the Glasgow Herald, September 7, 1909. For a general discussion of the sale of
titles see an interesting article entitled The New Corruption. The Commons and the
Sale of Honours* in the Candid Quarterly Review conducted by Thomas
ofPublic Affairs . . .
Gibson Bowles, No. i, February 1914 (vol. i, pp. 39 sqq.).
314
TO THE DEATH OF EDWARD VII
gambling common to all

Englishmen, were perhaps more
intimately in touch with popular feeling than many a Radical
orator. In the political sphere they gave little trouble. Normally
they never took part in the sittings of a House to which

the Commons usually left little work and when an important
debate was held, barely a fifth of the peerage was present. But
the nation liked to see them preside over the amusements of the
people.
And not only over the amusements of the populace but at the
ceremonial functions of British public life. have seen how We
Haldane, to enable the Lords-Lieutenant in the counties to patro
nize the reorganization of the reserve force, had succeeded in
extending their functions on condition that they were assisted in

the performance of these new duties by committees of democratic
composition. About the same time violent Radical protests were

raised against the appointments to the benches of magistrates
made by the Lords-Lieutenant. Too many Unionists they com
plained were made Justices of the Peace, and only a handful of

Liberals. But the Lords-Lieutenant had the good sense to recog
nize that the charge was well founded and asked to be released
from an exclusive responsibility which was proving too invidious.
Finally, a compromise was reached which resembled the provi
sions of the Territorial and Reserve Forces Act of 1907. Hence
forward a local advisory committee composed of members of the
different partieswould assist the Lords-Lieutenant, who, how
ever, would make the with the
actual choice after consultation
committee. 1 In one of his most violent diatribes Lloyd George
1
One of the first measures passed under the Liberal Government had been a Statute
which modified the institution of Justices of the Peace by 6 Edw. 7, Cap. 16: An Act to
amend the law relating to Justices of the Peace (Justices of the Peace Act, 1906). The Act
abolished all pecuniary and residential qualifications and the ineligibility of solicitors. It
was immediately after this that the question of their nomination was raised. See the
memorandum presented to the Chancellor by Mr. John Brunner in the name of 88 Liberal
and Labour Members of Parliament and the Chancellor s reply (The Times, December 29,
1906). To understand the exact nature of the reform, it must be premised that hitherto the
Chancellor had appointed the Justices of the Peace on the Lord-Lieutenant s recommenda
tion. In future, the latter would recommend only candidates who had first been recom
mended to him by the newly appointed consultative committees. In November 1906 the
Government appointed a Royal Commission on the Selection of Justices of the Peace
which reported on July 6, 1910. Its recommendations were adopted, see H. of C., May i,
1911, Asquith s Commons 1911, 5th Series, vol. xxi, p.
speech (Parliamentary Debates,
103). The appointment of Justices ofthe Peace continued until 1912 to arouse serious
protests. Since then no complaints have been raised. See the letters to The Times by Sir
Hugh Bell, September n, 1925, Lord Graham, September 22, 1925, the Chancellor, Lord
Cave, October i, 1925, and Lord Haldane s speech to the fourth annual conference of the
315
admitted implicitly the continued popularity of the peerage. As
idols on their pedestals,
long as they were contented to be mere
that silence which became their rank and their
preserving stately
intelligence, went well, and the average British citizen rather
all
looked up to them/ 1 In 1909 they made a mistake; they stepped

off their perch and threw the country into a turmoil which might
well have been avoided. Obviously, they must be taught a lesson.
But how many people w anted that lesson to be a severe one?
r
From the moment of the

Lords rejection of the Budget, and
the subsequent verdict of the electorate in favour of the Govern
ment, it was noticeable that Lloyd George abstained from those
inflammatory speeches by which the year before he had done his
utmost to intimidate, or rather to exasperate, the Dukes The .
Premier, Henry Asquith, assumed the leadership of a campaign

in which the Chancellor of the Exchequer had no longer a direct
interest. He gave it the strictly constitutional character of a debate
between two parties equally anxious not to allow the country to
slip
into revolution and against whose powerful organization the
free lances and extremists were powerless. A choice presented
itself between two alternatives. Either the composition of the
House of Lords could be left untouched and its control over the
decisions of the Commons restricted, or its control could be left
intact and its composition reformed.
Anxious to act as speedily as possible, the Cabinet did not touch

the question of reforming the Lords but choosing the former
alternative asked for a Statute which would expressly restrict their
prerogative and make it

impossible for them in future to violate
constitutional usage, as they had violated it by rejecting the
Budget. Asquith therefore adopted the attitude of a defender of

the constitution threatened by revolutionaries. For a manifest
error of judgment on the part of the Unionists enabled him to
make the Liberal programme appear Conservative. The imme
diate cause, the actual irritant cause of what we may with reason
Magistrates Association at the Guildhall, October 23, 1925. The appointment of the Lords-
Lieutenant themselves was a source of friction between 1906 and 1910 between the King
and his Liberal ministers. (Sir Sidney Lee, King Edward VII, vol. ii, p. 447.)
1
Speech at Newcastle-on-Tyne, October 9, 1909.
316
call a constitutional crisis is the entirely novel pretension on the
part of
the House of Lords, not only to interfere in matters of
but even to exercise a controlling right
public finance, upon them
and mould them to its
liking . . . hence this
paradoxical issue. It is
we, the Progressive party, who are occupying today, before all
else, a conservative and constitutional position. are defending We
the liberties that the past has handed down to us against encroach
ments and usurpations which have for the first time received the
official approbation of the Tory party/ When therefore on March
29, 1910, he invited the newly-elected House of Commons to
pass which embodied the Government s policy,
three resolutions
the first of these declared
it to be
expedient that the House of
Lords be disabled by law from rejecting or amending a Money
Bill To avoid ambiguity, a Money Bill was defined as any Bill
.
which in the judgment of the Speaker contained provisions rela

tive to one or more of the following subjects: the imposition,
abolition, reduction, alteration or modification of a tax, the
charging of any item of expenditure to the Consolidated Fund,
or the authorization of any item of expenditure by the Commons,
the budget of receipts, the employment, control or regulation of
the national revenue, the issue, guarantee, or repayment of a loan,
or questions indirectly relating to any or all- of these subjects.
But the Liberal Cabinet, secure of its parliamentary majority,
was not satisfied with a defensive victory over the Unionists and
the House of Lords. It met the Unionist offensive by a counter-
offensive. In the speech from which we have just quoted Asquith
denied not only the right claimed by the Upper House to limit
the financial powers of the House of Commons, but even its right
to compel a dissolution, since it was itself exempt from dissolu
tion, way to set up and overthrow Governments at its
and in this
pleasure. Thisamounted to contesting the Lords right to do

what they had successfully done in 1886 by summoning the
Liberal Government, if it dared, to appeal to the electorate. No
one, however, at the time seems to have charged the House of
Lords with a breach of the Constitution. The Cabinet s present
design an obvious innovation was not simply to declare by
an express Statute the Lords impotence in financial questions, but
to limit their powers in every sphere.
The method by which the Cabinet proposed to do this was no
novelty. It was as old as Radicalism itself.
317
As early as 1835 when the two Houses joined issue over the
Bill reforming Municipal Corporations, a young Radical member,
Roebuck, had moved that the amendments introduced into the
Billby the Lords should be rejected en bloc. He had then pro
ceeded to point out that as a result of the Reform of 1832 two
Houses confronted each other divergent in origin and in the
temper which inspired them, doomed therefore to conflict, and
that this conflict might issue in revolution unless a constitutional
procedure were devised for settling such crises. He therefore pro

posed that the House of Lords should be deprived of its absolute
veto and should in future possess only a power to suspend Bills. It
would still be able to send a Bill back to the House of Commons,
but if the Commons passed it a second time during the same
sessionand the King gave it his assent it would become law
without being passed by the Lords. 1 A few months later James
Mill, who
since Bentham s death had been the
philosopher and
patriarch of British Radicalism, gave Roebuck s
proposal his
2
blessing.
. Haifa century passed and the veto of the Lords was untouched.
Then a crisis threatened. It was in 1884. The occasion was a third
Reform Bill of an extremely democratic character, passed by a
Radical House of Commons. An important speech was delivered
a public meeting by the Radical veteran John 3
at
Bright. He
prescribed exactly the same remedy as Roebuck forty-nine years
before. Its effect would, he said, be to
get rid of the veto altogether
except in a few very exceptional cases. Only genuine statesmen
would take part in the debates of the Upper House. Peers who
were indifferent to politics would enjoy their titles and their
honours in the counties and would not trouble to come to West
minster, on a fool s errand, to reject a measure that was certain to
be adopted the following year. These
significant words reveal
the reasons why the Radical
party preferred limiting the powers
of the House of Lords to altering its
composition. It should be
made harmless, but that once accomplished, there was no reason
why it should not be left intact as a picturesque survival.
1
H. of C., August 31, September 2, 1835 (Parliamentary Debates, 3rd Series, vol. xxx,
pp. 1162 sqq., 1269-70).
2
Let Bills be sent up from the Commons, so soon as the pressure from without shall
have compelled them also to
open their eyes, for unseating the thirty Prelates and suspend
ing the definitive veto of the Peers tacking them both to the
supplies. (Westminster
Review, January 1836, vol. xxiv, p. 78.)
3
Speech at Birmingham, August 4, 1884.
318
On this
occasion a compromise was reached and a long period
followed during which the electorate and the Lords agreed in
preventing the Liberals from passing a Home Rule Bill. Before
the General Election of 1895 the Liberal leaders were fond of say
ing that, if their party were returned, they would take measures
to restrict the powers of the House of Lords and abolish its veto.
But the Liberals were not returned and it was not until a decade
later after the Election of 1906 that the problem of the relations
between the two Chambers once more became acute. The Liberal
Ministers at once revived the old programme of Roebuck and
John Bright. At the beginning of 1907 when a serious conflict
had just broken out between the two Houses on the subject of the
Education Bill the question was systematically examined. Ob
viously, a Government measure could not be content with the
rough suggestions which had been enough for Roebuck and
Bright. It was suggested at first that in case of conflict between
die two Chambers, the House of Lords should elect a hundred
delegates who sitting together with the House of Commons
should constitute a joint body with which the final decision would
1
rest. It was an excessively simplified solution which Campbell-
Bannerman modified by incorporating it into a system of very

different inspiration. The resolution which he carried in the
House of Commons on June 26, 1907, by a majority of 285 pro
vided that in case of conflict both Houses should elect each an
equal and limited number of delegates to arrange if possible
a compromise. If they failed the House of Commons could
pass the original Bill a second time with any amendment

it
thought desirable. If it were thrown but again, a joint con

ference would again meet to seek a compromise. If it failed
again the Commons could pass the Bill a third time in which
case it would become law without the assent of the Lords.
To prevent the Commons abusing their new prerogative, the
legal duration of Parliament would be reduced from seven to
five years. 2
What use would the Liberal Cabinet make of this resolution?
1
J. A. Spender, The Life of the Right Hon. Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman,
vol. ii, p. 3 50.
See also Sir Henry CampbeU-Bannerrnan s criticisms, ibid., p. 351. James Mill had already
considered the idea in the article mentioned above. (Westminster Review, January 1836;
vol. xxiv, pp. 76-7.)
2
See the debates H. of C, June 24, 25, 26, 1907 (Parliamentary Debates, 4th Series, vol.
clxxvi, pp. 909 sqq., 1157 sqq., 1408 sqq.).
319
Take it House of Lords would accept it as in
for granted that the
the seventeenth century it had accepted the resolutions restricting
its financial
powers? Or would it immediately send up a measure
which it knew beforehand that the Upper House would dislike
and if it were thrown out embody the resolution in a Bill? In that
case the problem would arise of the method by which the Lords
could be compelled to pass the Bill. 1 As we know, no action was
taken. The Government waited before joining battle until the
House of Lords presumed to contest the financial sovereignty of
the Lower House. Then the machinery held in reserve for the last
three years was put in motion. The second and third resolutions
submitted by Asquith to the House of Commons on March 24
resembled that of 1907 in two essential points. They made it
impossible for the Lords to reject more than twice in the course
of the same session a Bill passed by the Commons. And they res
tricted the duration of Parliament to five years. But on one point
they were more radical. They made no provision either after the
or the second passing of a Bill by the Commons for the meet
first
ing of a conference a committee of arbitration, to attempt a

,
2
friendly settlement of the dispute.
We must not mistake the significance of this second resolution,
no longer Conservative but a manifest innovation. The Unionists
chief argument in favour of the prerogatives of the Upper House
was the necessity for protecting the country against the autocratic
rule of a legislature which it had no doubt elected but at a
parti
cular juncture and as the result of a movement of
opinion from
which a reaction might well have followed. Moreover, even if
this were not the case, the election did not
imply that the nation
accepted every point of an extremely complicated programme.
The House of Lords therefore fulfilled an extremely useful func
tion when it distinguished between the different items of the
Government s programme and accepted or rejected the Bills sent
up from the Commons as in its opinion they did or did not ex
press the permanent will of the nation. If the Nonconformists
1
See the speech delivered at Edinburgh on January 24 by the Lord Advocate, Thomas
Shaw.
*
It is of interest however to observe that some
politicians of the left groups depicted the
proposal to establish a conference* as inspired by motives far from conciliatory. See J. R.
MacDonald, speech at Bradford, October 13, 1907: . . . The liberal party were going to
fight the House of Lords by the creation of a third Chamber, or joint committee of both
Houses which would lord it with an iron hand over both the Lords and the Commons/
But his argument was perhaps only rhetorical.
320
Ip09 TO THE DEATH OF EDWARD VI,!
demanded an alteration of the Education Bill of 1902, was it not

evident, more evident each year, that the majority of the elec
torate, indeed the majority of the Liberal party itself, took no
interest in the question? If the Irish Nationalists gave the Liberal
Cabinet the indispensable support of their eighty votes was it not
with the avowed intention of carrying by what amounted to a
ruse their Home Rule Bill, which though it figured on the official
programme of the party, could not be regarded with any certainty
as representing the wishes of the Liberal electorate? The Lords
allowed the Liberals, if they desired, to make a fresh appeal to
the country and if the electorate still supported them the Bill in
question would have received the sanction of the popular vote

and the Upper House would give way, as it was doing at this
very moment by passing Lloyd George s Budget. But this right
to compel, a dissolution of Parliament and the election of a new
House of Commons was regarded by the Lords as the core of
1
their prerogative.
The Liberal reply to this argument was twofold. In the first
place, they alleged that the Conservative peers abused their power
by rejecting Bills passed by the Lower House to which it would
be difficult to maintain that the country was hostile but whose
nature was too special for it to be possible on such an issue to
undertake the expense of consulting it. The country, for example,
would not appreciate its opinion being asked on the plural vote or
on Welsh Disestablishment. Yet it would be impossible to deny
that the majority of the electors were in favour of abolishing the
plural vote or that the entire body of Welsh Liberals that is, the
overwhelming majority of the Welsh people, wanted disestablish

ment, or to allege that their claim met with any strong opposition
from the English and Scottish electorate. In the second place, they
argued that a body whose composition was so aristocratic as the
House of Lords could not exercise this right of control satisfac
torily. was exclusively hereditary and the new members
Since it
who were men whose class or caste interest would

entered it
quickly imbue them with the prejudices of an hereditary nobility,

1
There was a method of restricting by law the veto of the Lords which would actually
have had the effect of strengthening its powers understood in this sense. W. E. H. Lecky
(Democracy and Liberty, 1896, vol. i, pp. 386-7) proposed that no law could be passed in
opposition to the Upper House which had not been passed by two successive Houses of
Commons and by a majority of two-thirds. He adds: Such a change would, in theory,
diminish the powers of the House of Lords. In practice it would, I believe, considerably
increase them.
321
it was
inevitably an appanage of the Conservative party and the
Liberals a small minority. The House of Lords therefore exercised
itsfunction of control only when the Cabinet was Liberal. Sup
pose a Liberal majority unexpectedly passed a Bill conferring a
separate Parliament upon Ireland, the House of Lords would rise
in revolt and demand an appeal to the country. But suppose a
Unionist majority, though elected on a programme of opposition
to Home Rule, unexpectedly passed a Bill in favour of tariff
reform, would the House of Lords on the same principles compel
the Government to consult the country before making such a
serious decision? On the contrary, they would of course register
automatically the decision of the Lower House. In short, the
British Constitution, according to the Liberals, was bicameral
only
in appearance. In reality there was only one sovereign Chamber,
theHouse of Lords when the Liberals had a majority in the
Commons, the House of Commons when the Conservatives were
in a majority.
In that case,why not adopt the programme of unmitigated
democracy and abolish the House of Lords? The Labour mem
bers and a handful of Radicals were in favour of this course. But
it was
perhaps simply to discharge their consciences and without
deep conviction. In any case that solution found no favour with
the ministers and the vast
majority of the Liberal party. Then why
not reform the House of Lords and while keeping it in existence
make its
composition democratic? In principle the Government
was in favour of reforming the House of Lords. It had been
explicitly mentioned in the King s
speech. But on the one hand
it was a difficult problem which it would take time to setde, and
the previous November had made it clear that a settlement of the
relations between the two Houses could not be delayed. And on
the other hand there was a danger that such a reform
by making
the constitution of the House of Lords less of an anachronism
might strengthen its position in face of the Commons. Even after
the House of Lords had been reformed it would therefore still be
necessary to define strictly the relations between the two Houses
and prevent a right to revise and suspend the Bills
passed by the
representatives of the people degenerating into a right of absolute
veto. This in the eyes of the Liberals was the essential matter.
322
It was left therefore to the Conservatives to put forward as a
practical issue the question

of the Reform of the House of Lords,
deliberately thrust into thebackground by the Liberals. In truth,
the question was not new. Twice already within the last half
century it had been raised, on both occasions after a democratic
reform of the representative system which had convinced a
number of peers that the House of Lords would do well to
modernize itself if it were to continue to exercise its traditional
functions, in relation to the Lower House. On
both occasions it
was a Liberal who had taken the initiative, but Liberal of inde
a
pendent views, who received little support from the leaders
of his party and found many supporters among the Conservatives.
In 1869, two years after the passing of the important Reform
Bill which in current parlance had given universal suffrage (or
something approaching it) to the boroughs, Lord John Russell
submitted to the House of Lords a Bill authorizing the Crown to
peerages. They would
create life not exceed twenty-eight in all
and no more than four might be created in any one year. These
life
peers were to be chosen from persons who had occupied
high judicial or administrative positions, or had sat in the Com
mons for ten years at or had achieved distinction in science,
least,
literature or art. His object was to strengthen the position of the
House of Lords, and improve the quality of its debates by intro
ducing there the talents of a Jenner or a Watt Lord John was a

.
former Liberal Prime Minister who watched with uneasiness the

progress of the new democratic England. The Liberal party,
which under Gladstone s leadership occupied the majority of seats
in the Commons, bore little likeness to that which he had himself
led before the reform of 1867. Many Conservatives approved of
his proposal. To confer an hereditary peerage oti judges, on sol
diers without private wealth, in a democratic age in which a
Government could no longer lavish grants and sinecures on new
peers and their descendants, would be to create a class of im
poverished peers who would not enhance the prestige of the
order. Lord Salisbury declared it advisable to widen the compo
sition of the House of Lords by introducing representatives of the
intellectual and industrial classes. Lord John s Bill nearly passed
323
the House of Lords but at the kst moment dislike of change
third reading.1 on the
proved too powerful. It was rejected
On
one point nevertheless everyone agreed that it met an
urgent need. The House of Lords was not only a legislative body
of the rank, it was also a supreme court ofjustice. But it was
first
ill constituted to
perform this latter function. For such a task, the
Lord Chancellor, one or two peers who had been former Lord
Chancellors and had been raised to the peerage after filling other
important judicial posts, men whose intellect had often been weak
ened by age, did not suffice. Already in 1856 the Government of
the day had attempted to promote a lawyer to the Upper House
But the attempt had aroused the wrath of the
as a life peer. House
of Lords and after lengthy debates in both Houses the Cabinet
had given way and transformed Baron Wensleydale s life peerage
into an hereditary peerage. After the failure of Lord John s Bill,
which would have solved the problem, another method was
adopted. In 1873 when the organization of the superior courts of
justice was completely remodelled, the opportunity was taken to
divest the House of Lords of all its judicial functions, which were
given to a new body called the High Court of Appeal The Act .
was scarcely on the Statute Book when the Lords repented of

having surrendered so easily the privileges of their order. The
execution of the Statute was suspended and a compromise was
finally reached. Above the new court of appeal the House of
Lords remained the court of last instance. But when sitting in that
capacity it would be assisted by Lords of Appeal in Ordinary,
professional judges appointed by the executive. at first, their Two
number would be raised later to four. So long as they exercised
their functions they would possess all the rights of a member of
the House of Lords. That meant very often that they would be
peers for life. And this fact would be expressly recognized by a
Statute of 1888 which declared all the Lords of Appeal were life
peers. It was the first

departure from the principle of an Upper
Chamber exclusively hereditary.
2
1
H. of L., April 9, 27; June 3, 8; July 8, 1869 (Parliamentary Debates, 3rd Series, vol.
cxcv, pp. 452 sqq.; 1648 sqq.; vol. cxcvi, pp. 1172 sqq.; 1370 sqq.; vol. cxcvii, pp.
1387 sqq.). From a speech made by Lord Lyndhurst in 1856 it would seem that the idea
of creating life peers had akeady found favour during the struggle over the Reform Bill
with certain members of Lord Grey s Cabinet. (H. of L., February 7, 1856; ibid., vol. cxl,
pp. 275-6.)
2
For all this
legislation see 36 & 37 Viet., Cap. 66: An Act for the constitution of a
Supreme Court and for other purposes relating to the better Administration of Justice in
324
I9O9 TO THE DEATH OF EDWARD VII
In 1884 the representative basis of the House of Commons was

rendered still more democratic. The new reform extended to the
counties the franchise which the Act of 1867 had established in
the boroughs. We
now find the young Lord Rosebery playing
the part played fifteen years earlier by the aged Lori John Russell,
and bringing forward in the same spirit the problem of reforming
the House of Lords,
While the Bill was being debated in the Commons and John
Bright was raising the other question of restricting the Lords
prerogatives, Lord Rosebery moved in the Upper House that an
enquiry* should be undertaken into the best means to employ
for improving its effectualness 1 It was desirable, he urged, that
.
medicine, science, art, literature, commerce, and even the work

ing class should be represented, also India and the Colonies. It
would also perhaps be advisable to create life peers and permit
men who were not peers to take part as consultants in the work of
the House. The motion was rejected. But Lord Rosebery did not
abandon the idea and he found support among the Conservatives.
In 1886 the Conservative party, transformed in virtue of its
coalition with those Liberals who disapproved of Home Rule
into the Unionist party, returned to office. In 1888 a Radical
member invited the House of Commons to pass a resolution con
2
demning the principle of an hereditary legislature. His motion
was rejected as we should expect of an assembly with a Conserva
tive majority. But it again drew public attention to the problem
of the composition of the Upper House, and the Unionists, who
felt their hold on office precarious, were the first to interest them
selves in it. Lord Rosebery came forward again, once more asked
for the appointment of a Committee to examine the question, and
England: and to authorize the transfer to the Appellate Division of such Supreme Court
of the Jurisdiction of the Judicial Committee of Her Majesty s Privy Council (Supreme
Court ofJudicature Act, 1873). 37 & 38 Viet., Cap. 83 An Act for delaying the coming into
1
operation of the Supreme Court of Judicature, 1873 (Supreme Court ofJudicature [com
mencement] Act). 38 & 39 Viet., Car. 97: An Act to amend and extend the Supreme
Court ofJudicature Act, 1873 (Supreme Court ofJudicature Act, 1875). 39 & 40 Viet., Cap.
59: An Act for amending the Law in respect of the. Appellate Jurisdiction of the House of
Lords and for other purposes (Appellate Jurisdiction Act, 1876). 50 & 51 Viet., Cap. 70: An
Act to amend the Appellate Jurisdiction Act 1876 (Appellate Jurisdiction Act, 1888). In
another and more indirect way the principle of life peerages has found expression in the
House of Lords. The Cabinet when conferring new peerages so lavishly, has often con
ferred them on bachelors or men without male heirs. In theory such a peerage is hereditary.
In practice it is a life peerage. "We cannot regard Viscount Morley, Viscount Haldane, and
at the present time Viscount Snowden as anything but life peers.
1 H. of
L., June 1889 (Parliamentary Debates, 3rd Series, vol. cccxxxii, pp. 937 sqq.).
* H. of
C., March 9, 1888, Labouchere s motion (ibid., vol. cccxxiai, pp. 763 sqqX
325
suggested an Upper House composed in part of peers elected by
their order, in part of members elected either by the new County
Councils or by the House of Commons itself. Life peers might
be created by the Government. The Self-Governing Colonies
might send representatives. In case of conflict both Houses would
1
sit and vote
together in a joint sitting. And, on the other hand,
an independent Unionist, Lord Dunraven, brought in a Bill to
reform the House of Lords, more carefully thought out than any
of the earlier projects and in entire harmony with Lord Rosebery s
views. 2 He proposed an Upper House consisting of two elements
almost equal in number. There would be hereditary peers elected
to represent the entire body of hereditary peers as was already the
case for Scotland and Ireland, but there would also be representa
tives of the Colonies, the Church of England, the free Churches,
and the Catholic Church, of literature and the sciences, above all
representatives elected by the County Councils. Lord Salisbury,
as we
should expect, condemned the Bill, but he admitted that
it contained
acceptable suggestions and promised on behalf of the
Government to introduce a Bill to facilitate the entry of life peers
House of Lords He soon kept his word. He brought in a
into the .
3
very obviously inspired by Lord Russell s Bill of i869. The
Bill
Crown would be empowered to create life peers chospn among
the judges, soldiers, sailors, diplomatists, high officials who were
members of the Privy Council and Colonial Governors. Under
exceptional circumstances and by a special procedure intended to
prevent any possibility of abuse the Crown might create a limited
number of new peers, outside these categories at the most five
in And the total number of life peers must never exceed
one year.
fifty. We may add that by extending a measure adopted in 1871
to exclude bankrupts4 Lord Salisbury s Bill permitted the Crown
acting in concert with the House of Lords to expel a peer judged

unworthy of a seat in the House.
But the Bill introduced by the Unionist Premier was soon
dropped. The General Election of 1895 seemed to inaugurate in
English history an epoch of Conservative supremacy which would
1 H. of L., March. 19, 1888 (Parliamentary Debates, 3rd Series, vol. cccxxiii, pp. 1538 sqq.).
1
H. of L., April 26, 1888 (ibid, vol. cccxxv, pp. 518 sqq.). See also his article written
some years before entitled The House of Lords. Its Reform. (Nineteenth Century, No. 84,
February 4, 1884, vol. xv, pp. 200 sqq.).
H. of L., June 18, 1888 (Parl. Deb., 3rd Ser., vol. cccxxvii, pp. 387 sqq.).
4
34 &35 Viet., Cap. 50: An Act for disqualifying Bankrupts from sitting or voting in
the House of Lords. (Bankruptcy Disqualification Act,
1871.)
326
1909 TO THE DEATH OP EDWARD VII
be prolonged indefinitely.The sole echo of these projects was the

occasional discussion in imperialist circles of a reform of the
House of Lords which would solve at the same time the problem
of Irish Home Rule. Separate local parliaments, it was suggested,
should be set up for England, Scotland, and Ireland, possibly also
for Wales. An Upper House, reformed and rendered elective,
would represent not only the entire United Kingdom but the
Empire. The discussion however remained academic. The scheme
never enjoyed the least popular support either in England or
Ireland or in the Self-Governing Colonies. But the situation was
changed by the Election of 1906. It was not surprising that this

dramatic reverse shook the Unionists from their slumbers, and
that the reform of the House of Lords as well as the restriction of
its
prerogative, became once more a burning question.
In 1907 without waiting for CampbeU-Bannerman s motion

in favour of abolishing the veto of the House of Lords, Lord
Newton introduced a Bill to reform it. The measure restricted
the right to sit in the Upper Chamber
to those hereditary peers
who had occupied certain important positions in the State; the
hereditary peers would elect representatives equal in number to a
fourth of their entire body, and the Crown would be empowered
to create a hundred life peers. But instead of debating the clauses,
the Lords appointed a Committee to advise as to the best methods
of reforming the work of the House of Lords*. Lord Crewe,
speaking on behalf of the Government, refused even to express
an opinion of Lord Newton s Bill. It was not a question of altering
the composition of the House of Lords but of settling the relations
between the two Houses.1 The Committee was composed entirely
of Unionists with the exception of Lord Rosebery, who could
no longer be called a Liberal. It was on his motion that the Com
mittee had been appointed. And it elected him its chairman.
2
It
reported in December I9c8. About the principle on which c
reform should be based it had no hesitations. It declared it un-
1
H. of L., May 6, 1907 (Parliamentary Debates, 4th Series, vol. dxxiii, pp. 1203 sqq.).
2
Report from the Select Committee on. the House of Lords together with the proceed
ings of the Committee and Appendix, 1908.
327
desirable that the possession of a peerage should give by itself the
right of sitting and voting in the House of Lords . To apply that

principle it suggested a House of Lords composed of 200 peers
elected by the entire order, like the existing representative peers
of Scotland and Ireland, peers who had the right to membership
because they held or had held a number of high offices; according
to the report there were 130 of these in the contemporary peerage,
and finally a maximum of forty life peers. But the plan, as die
members of the Committee admitted, was open to a serious ob
jection. When the 130 peers had been deducted, who retained
their seats in virtue of the high offices they occupied or had occu
pied in the State, only nonentities would be left. Therefore, the

200 representative peers must in the very nature of things be non
entities. Moreover,
being elected by a body of which the over
whelming majority was Conservative, they would be all Con
servatives. There would not even be amongst their number that
small majority of independent Liberals which a purely hereditary
House contained. What then should be done? Admit representa
tives elected by the Borough and County Councils? 1 The
sugges
tion was too bold for the members of the Committee, more
timid in 1907 than Lord Rosebery and Lord Dunraven had been
in 1888. Allow the government of the day with a majority in the
Commons to nominate a certain number of its followers as mem
bers of the House of Lords for the duration of Parliament? It was
a bizarre suggestion which the Committee rejected by a large
majority.
It was once more left to Lord Rosebery to raise in 1910 this
question of the reform of the House of Lords. Arthur Balfour, in

his address to the electorate of December 10, had
deliberately
shirked the issue, careful even, as he has himself told us, not to
declare against reform. indeed should he commit himself
Why
at a moment when he might
still
hope for a victory at the polls
which would be the victory of the House of Lords as at present
composed ? The Unionists therefore who had indeed been defeated
at the January Election but whose defeat had not been
hopeless,
while not going so far as to place reform of the Lords on their
programme, welcomed the intervention of an independent states-
1 Lord Saint Aldwyn to Lord Newton, February 8, 1907 (Lady Victoria Hicks-Beach,
Life of Sir Michael Hicks-Beach (Earl Saint
Aldwyn) 1932, vol. ii, pp. 255-6). Lord Saint
Aldwyn suggested the election, at every General Election, of a number of peers not only
by the County Councils but also by the Colonial legislatures.
328
DEATH OF EDWARD TO PARLIAMENT BILL
man who though bitterly hostile to the Budget of 1909 had never
theless advised the House of Lords how wisely the event had
proved against the tactical mistake of throwing it out. Lord
Rosebery s three resolutions of March 14, and his two more
detailed resolutions of Aprilembodied in substance the prin
13,
ciples
laid down in 1908 by which he had
the committee over
presided. On March 14 he moved that the possession of a peerage

should no longer confer, by itself, the right of sitting and voting
in the House of Lords On April 13 he proposed a House of
.
Lords consisting in the first place of peers elected by the body of

hereditary peers, in the second place of peers sitting in virtue of
their official position, in the third place of
peers chosen from
outside What are we to understand by these words? Life peers
.
created by Crown? Or temporary peers chosen by a more or

the
less democratic electorate? 1 The formula was intentionally vague.
II FROM THE DEATH OF EDWARD VH TO THE

PASSING OF THE PARLIAMENT BELL
Thus, about the end of April 1910 the plan of the Government
and Lord Rosebery s plan to which it would seem Lord Lans-
downe had given his approval2 confronted each other. The
Government had carried in the House of Commons their resolu
tions intended to weaken the check exercised by the Upper upon
the Lower House. Lord Rosebery had carried in the House of
Lords two resolutions intended to strengthen the Upper House
by modifying its composition. Asquith had just introduced a Bill
to give effect to his policy, Lord Rosebery promised to do the
same thing for his. What would happen if when the Commons
passed the Government s Bill, the Lords replied by passing Lord
1
It would not have been in the least democratic if Lord Wemyss suggestion had been
adopted that a fixed number of peers should be elected by a number of important bodies,
three by each. Lord Wemyss suggested twenty-one bodies on whom this right might be
conferred. For example the Royal Institute of British Architects, the Royal Academy of
Arts, the Society of Engineers, the Shipping Federation, the Employers Parliamentary
Council, the Liberty and Property Defence League, etc. (H. of L. f April 25, 1910. Parlia
mentary Debates, Lords 1910, 5th Series, voL v, p. 683).
2
Not it would seem without considerable reluctance and under pressure from the
agents of the party (Lord Newton, LordLansdowne. A Biography, pp. 385 sqq.).
329
Rosebery There was nothing to prevent the House of Com

s?
mons rejecting a Bill not sufficiently democratic to satisfy the
Liberal majority. Even those Ministers who were least disposed
to destroy the House of Lords, were aware that the Radicals
1
would accept nothing but a purely elective chamber. But a Bill
on these lines if it even passed the Commons, would certainly be
rejected by the Lords. How was it possible under a bicameral
the question of the

system to escape an impasse of this kind unless
relations between the two Houses were settled first? But how
could they be settled by a Statute so long as the House of Lords
retained an absolute veto on the legislation of the Lower House?
By making use of the King s prerogative of creating on his
ministers advice a sufficient number of peers to change the
2
majority in the House of Lords? The increase in the number of
It would be
peers had rendered this method extremely difficult.
necessary to create 500 new peers. And at first the Ministers
themselves were sharply divided on the point. Finally, however,
the Cabinet decided to ask the King to create them if the fear of
seeing their order so cheapened did not make the more obstinate
peers submit. If*, Asquith declared, we do not find ourselves in a
position to ensure that statutory effect shall be given to that policy

in this Parliament, we shall then either resign our offices or recom
mend the dissolution of Parliament. Let me add this, that in no
case will we recommend a dissolution except under such condi
tions as will secure that in the new Parliament the judgment of
the people as expressed at the Elections will be carried into law. 3
Reassured by this solemn pledge the Irish at last allowed the
1
Sir Edward Grey, speech at the Hotel Cecil, March 14, 1910.
2
We may mention as a curiosity another solution suggested by an Irish member. The
actual issue of the writ of summons to the peers was part of the royal prerogative. "What
was there to prevent the King, on the advice of the Cabinet, from withholding writs from
a sufficient number of peers to ensure a majority for the Government s Bill? (J. C. Swift
MacNeill *A Short Waywith the House of Lords* Fortnightly Review, January I, 1894,
New Series, vol. Ivii, pp. i sqq., especially pp. 6 sqq.), also a letter to Sir Henry Campbell-
Bannerman, The Times, Apnl i, 1907. King Edward was attracted for a moment by the
idea (J. A. Spender and Cyril Asquith, Life of Lord Oxford and Asquith, vol. i, pp. 261-2)
and a few months later he put it forward again in a modified form. Only those peers would
be allowed to vote who were chosen by the leaders of the two great parties, fifty for either
party. To these alone the writ of summons would be sent. (See the King s Conversation
with Lord Crewe at Windsor, January 30, 1910 as reported
by Sir Sidney Lee (King
Edward VII . . vol. ii, p. 695.) It would seem that in 1884 the Socialist Pankhurst contem
.
plated the possibility that the House of Lords might be abolished by this indirect method.
The Sovereign would no longer summon the peers and the House of Lords would there
fore cease to exist. (E. Sylvia Pankhurst. The Suffragette Movement, pp. 81-2.)
8
H. of C., April 14, 1910 (Parliamentary Debates, Commons 1910, 5th Series, vol. xvi,
p. 1548).
330
DEATH OF EDWARD TO PARLIAMENT BILI
Budget of 1909 to be passed with a few amendments of detail. By

a ruthless use of the closure it was passed in ten days. By April 29
the business had been despatched and the recess began. It was
when Parliament reassembled at the end of May that the dramatic
struggle, between the two Houses would reach its denouement.
If again the House of Lords refused to yield, it would be the
King s turn to act.

But the unforeseen happened. The King, who had returned
from Biarritz on the very day when the Commons passed the
Budget, died on May 6. His health had been failing for many
months and his entourage and himself were aware that the first ,
illness might prove fatal. But the secret had been so well kept, and
to the last moment he had performed his official duties with such
zest that the public were taken by surprise. The English gave free
rein to those feelings of national grief which always accompany
an English monarch to his tomb. Journalists acclaimed in chorus
with complete seriousness and without provoking a smile from
their readers his political genius and even his private virtues. Had
he not by his visits to all the rulers in Europe taken a prominent
place in the history of his time ? Was he not loved in France, hated
in Germany, in both countries regarded as a great monarch? Had
he not, moreover, possessed from his youth the reputation of a
liberal prince, a friend of the popular cause? Unfortunately, much
of this was legend. The part he had played in foreign policy had
not perhaps been so important as was almost universally believed,
and his Liberalism was certainly not as solid as it was said to be.
As he grew older and became ill and tired his opinions became
increasingly similar to those, sufficiently commonplace in all
conscience, held by the clubmen among whom he lived, those
people, we all know so well, who, completely ignorant of public

lament every day as they puff at their fat cigars that the
affairs,
country is going to the dogs and declaim against what they are
pleased to call the vulgar behaviour of the outsiders who have
forced their way into society. 1 As uncultivated as his mother, he
1
In view of certain legends the judgment expressed by an important English review
on the entourage of King Edward which appeared on the eve of his death is well worth
quoting The King has many qualities, no one is more kind-hearted. He is a capital sports
man, and in foreign affairs he possesses a fine instinct which seldom leads him wrong. His
very geniality and good fellowship deprives him of much of the awe with which the late
Queen was regarded. His Majesty is a man of the world, going freely into society. But not
even the most servile courtier could say that he has ever, whether as Prince or King, sur
rounded himself with men who are influential in either House of Parliament, Those who
331
did not possess, if the truth must be told, her grasp of political
realities. And this had its good side. For the complaints with
which he wearied his Ministers and of which they took little
notice were less concerned with questions of general policy than

with personal matters, appointments, and honours. For the rest,
punctilious over points
of etiquette and a past-master in the art
of good fellowship, extremely conscientious in the performance
of his ceremonial functions, delighted when his time-table was
crowded with levees, openings, race meetings, dinners, visits to
the opera or music hall, he was a model constitutional sovereign.
But if all these things contributed to his popularity, here also
there are reservations to be made. Though on the morrow of his
death no one dare admit it publicly, he was too fond of the theatre
and fond of travelling and visits abroad, too cosmo
casino, too
politan, too European to be the national monarch England
,
would fain have possessed. In him the monarchy was honoured

rather than the monarch. It would certainly not be very long
before it was perceived how superficial his popularity had been. 1
King George, who ascended the throne at the age of forty-five,
had become heir unexpectedly in 1893 by the death of his elder
brother. He had been brought up to be a sailor not a King. Like
his father he was a great traveller, but he had not visited the
watering-places and capitals of the Continent. He had opened the

first Parliament of the Australian Commonwealth, had visited
India, South Africa, and Canada. Because he had not been educa
ted for the throne, he spoke foreign languages badly. English to
have shared his valuable counsels, may be the

-worst of men, as they are often among the
pleasantest, but to the great world they are unknown. With the doubtful excep
political
tion of LordEsher who has one of the sanest heads in Europe, none of those who constitute
the entourage of the King count for anything in politics/ (Contemporary Review, May 1910,
vol. xcvii, p. 517.)
1 The authoritative work on Bang Edward is Sir Sidney Lee, King Edward the Seventh. A
Biography, 2 vols., 1925-27. Edward Legge s two volumes King Edward in his true Colours,
1912 and More about King Edward, 1913 seem the work of a courtier dissatisfied with the
tone, not sufficiently laudatory for his taste, of the article on King Edward in the Dictionary
of National Biography, though it did not prevent the royal family entrusting its author, Sir
Sidney Lee, with the task of writing the official biography of the dead monarch. They are
a mere collection of anecdotes and give us little information. See also the study of King
Edward by Lord Esher, who knew him intimately, in his book entitled, The Influence of
King Edward and Essays on other Subjects, 1915 also H. E. Wortham, The Delightful Profes
sion: Edward VIL A Study in Kingship, 1931. We
may mention as a curiosity the speech
delivered by Lord Haldane on December 14, 1907, in which in the course of a panegyric
of King Edward he maintained that in England a constitutional monarch possessed a
power of initiative not essentially different from that possessed by a so-called absolute
monarch. The speech aroused the wrath of the Radical Press. But it seems to have been
nothing but the fantastic expression of a metaphysician s dream.
332
the backbone and married to a Princess of the royal blood who
was English by birth, he and his wife presented for the first time
in England the spectacle of sovereigns who spoke English without
a foreign accent, and in whose entourage more English was
spoken
than German. Strictly patriotic and strictly conservative, of
middle-class tastes and habit, he was capable of decisive action.
Whether, surrounded by his numerous children he were piously
performing his religious duties, or reviewing with the compe
tence of an old sailor the manoeuvres of one of his fleets, or follow
ing amidst a huge crowd the fortunes of a football match, his
unsophisticated feelings were shared by his people. He was in
truth the imperial and insular monarch his subjects desired. He
was better fitted than the late king to become one day the
nation s
darling.
When in October King Edward had held conversations with

the leaders of the Opposition the Radical Press had suspected a
desire to intervene in the conflict. Two months later when
1
Asquith, stating his programme at a public meeting, declared his
resolve not to remain in office unless he could obtain the necessary
assurances, the Unionist Press had accused him of putting pressure
on the King to compel him, when the issue was joined, to support
the Cabinet against the House of Lords. King Edward, there can
be no doubt, dreaded the approach of that decisive moment, at a
loss which course to adopt when faced with the choice between
such formidable alternatives. Either he must refuse the request of
a Cabinet supported by a majority of the Commons, and would
be accused by the Radicals, as the House of Lords had been accused
in December, of attempting a coup d etat. Or he would yield and
be obliged to create such an enormous host of new peers to out
vote the present majority in the Chamber that he would be
accused and accused even by his own conscience of overthrowing
and debasing the hereditary House and in the sequel perhaps of
assisting the debasement and destruction of the hereditary
monar
itself. He died and his death barbed the denunciations of the
chy
Unionists. The insolence of the Radical Ministers, they said, had
darkened his old age, perhaps even shortened his life. Were they
1
333
proposing to embarrass by
conduct equally insolent the young
sovereign who was a novice in the art
of kingship? The Ministers
seized this opportunity to postpone a crisis which some of them
dreaded, Grey and Haldane and others besides. Every preparation

had been made for the dissolution of Parliament in the event of
a further conflict between the two Houses on the question of the
House of Lords, its functions and prerogatives. The electoral cam
paign had practically begun. Funds had been collected, the list of
candidates drawn up, and public meetings multiplied. Suddenly
the Government suspended all these preparations and contented
itself with raising to the peerage five great capitalists, in recom
pense apparently for the contributions they had just made to the
Liberal party funds. 1 And the Ministers approached the leaders of
the Opposition in the hope of discovering a compromise. When
Parliament met again on June 8 Lord Rosebery announced in the
Lords that he did not wish the House to proceed with the discussion
of his resolutions. In scarcely-veiled language he gave it to be
understood that he was taking this course at the request of the
Government. It had been agreed that a conference should be
formed, to consist of the principal representatives of the two
opposing parties four Unionists and four Liberals, the leaders
of both parties in both Houses, with two other representatives of
either party, among them Lloyd George. The Constitution just
set up in South Africa had been the work of a conference sitting
in private and containing representatives of the two hostile races
so lately in arms against each other. To effect an amicable agree
ment between the two English political parties on the question
of the relations between the two Houses would surely prove a
less difficult feat. The Government s decision was in fact acclaimed
by the mass of the nation. But the Labour members and the
Irish Nationalists protested. They had been excluded from the
Conference, which had therefore the appearance of an attempt by

the two traditional parties to settle the crisis apart from the two
groups whose recent appearance on the scene interfered with the
normal operation of the Parliamentary machine. On June 30
1 The
printer Richard Knight Causton (Baron Southwark), the tea merchant Hudson
Ewbanke Kearley (Baron Devonport), the cotton spinner William Henry Holland (Baron
Rotherham), the shipbuilder Sir Christopher Furness (Baron Furness) and finally the king
of Mexican petroleum, Sir Weetman Dickinson Pearson (Baron Cowdray of Midhurst).
For the last of these see J. A. Spender, Weetman Pearson First Viscount
Cowdray i856~1917,
1930.
334
Lloyd George introduced after an inevitable delay, the Budget

for the financial year 1910-11.The expenditure which it contem
plated
was enormous, almost reaching the figure of .200,000,000.
But its new provisions were extremely simple so that the Irish
had reason to fear that Parliament would pass it before the recess.
In that case an autumn session might, if the Cabinet wished, be
declared unnecessary. And since it soon became evident that the
Conference was multiplying its sittings without any hope of
reaching an immediate result, the Irish ran the risk that the Budget
would be passed with the question of the House of Lords in sus
pense and they would therefore find themselves once more at the
mercy of the Cabinet. But they were quickly reassured as to the
Government s intentions. On July 29 before the Budget had
passed its first
reading the Prime Minister explained that since the
Conference had not concluded its labours Parliament would sus
pend its sittings until November 12.

The Conference had held twelve meetings by this date. It met
again on October 12 and held nine more, the last on October
21.
They were private and the members were pledged to secrecy.

But enoughhas-been allowed to leak out to make it possible to
guess the points on which the discussion turned. 1
The first and most obvious suggestion which occurred to the

members of the Conference was to employ for the permanent
settlement of the question the same device to which the party
leaders had recourse in holding it. Had not the resolution passed
by the Commons in 1907 on the motion of Campbell-Bannerman
both Houses of a
provided for the election in the first instance by
joint conference of ten or twenty members to attempt an amic
able settlement of disputes? It is probable that the question of the
or Joint Committee gave rise
composition of the Conference
to interminable discussion. If in the Conference the number of
peers of either party

were to be proportionate to its numbers in
the House of Lords, the procedure would obviously give the
Conservatives an unfair advantage, certain as they would be of a
1 See The
Times, November 16, 1910, February 28, 1911 : Lord Newton,
Lord Lans-
downe. A Biography, pp. 395 sqq.J.
A. Spender and Cyril Asquith, Life of Lord Oxford
and Asqvith, vol. i, pp. 285 sqq.
VOLVOS 335
majority in the Conference however overwhelming might be

the Liberal majority in the Commons. If, on the contrary, the
majority of Unionist peers in the Conference were reduced exces
sively, even eventually abolished, the Unionists would have
reason to declare themselves duped. For a Government which
had a majority in the Commons would be sure of a majority in
the Conference. 1 It would seem however that it was on another
point that the difficulties proved insurmountable. The represent

atives of the Opposition wanted a distinction made between
three classes of Bills. The first of these would consist of Bills of
the normal type, such as any Parliament is called upon to pass
every year Education Bills, Bills for the protection of labour.

When Bills of this type were the subject of dispute between the
two Houses the Conservative representatives were willing that
the dispute should be submitted to the arbitration of a joint com
mittee about whose composition an agreement would eventually
be reached. As regards financial measures they agreed that the
House of Lords should formally renounce the right to reject
them, and were content to demand that the question whether or
not a particular Bill was or was not exclusively financial should be
decided by the committee. But there was another class of Bills for
which, the Unionists claimed, a special procedure was necessary.
They were measures which might be termed fundamental or
constitutional laws that is to say, laws which if Britain had
pos
sessed a written constitution would have formed part of it. At
this point the question of a referendum was raised,
The referendum is an institution which originated and has
flourished in Switzerland. When Switzerland had achieved its
unification in the nineteenth century on a federal basis, some of
its cantons still faithful to the
"were
principle of pure democracy,
the direct government of the people by the people. All the citizens
met to discuss, reject, or accept the measures submitted to them.
The other cantons which were governed by representative insti
tutions progressively rendered them more democratic and devised
an indirect method of returning to the system of direct demo
cracy, by enacting that on the demand of a certain number of
electors any measure
passed by the legislative assembly of the
1
See Charies Nicholson s plan (The Titties, July 4, 22, 1910) Of the hundred members
of which the Joint committee would consist fifty -were to be elected by the House of
Common*, to represent each party in proportion to its numerical strength, and fifty by
the House of Lords of which one-half would be Unionists, the other liberals.
336
canton must be submitted to the ratification of all the electors, and

that the electors might even under certain
prescribed conditions
take the initiative and compel the assembly to discuss a particular
measure; and the Federal Government followed the example of
the cantons and adopted the referendum.1 The institution had
spread to the English-speaking countries. In the great republic

of North America the procedure had been adopted in every State
but one for the revision of constitutional laws. Two States had
even granted the people the right to initiate legislation by petition.2
And within the British Empire itself the new Constitution of the
Australian Commonwealth had been based on the referendum.
An alteration of the Constitution which had been passed by both
Houses could not become law until it had been submitted to a
referendum. And if it had been passed twice by one chamber and
rejected twice by the other the Governor-General could settle the
conflict direct appeal to the people. 3
by a
Advocated in 1907 by certain Radicals4 what institution had a
more democratic appearance? the referendum had been con
f
sidered sympathetically in 1908 by Lord Rosebery s Committee
of the House of Lords though in its report the Committee had
refused to pronounce on a question which extended beyond the
limits of its programme*. The suggestion had been put forward
5
again in various quarters during die years icxyj-ipio. It would
1 Miscellaneous Ab. 3
(191 1) Reports from His Majesty s Representatives abroad respect
ing the Institution kno\vn as the Referendum* pp. 13 sqq. and Mi&eti&ie&iis Xo. 6 (1911)
Report by His Majesty s Minister at Berne respecting the Institution known as the Initia
tive in Switzerland,
2
See Biyce s Letter of April 18, 1910, printed in Miscellaneous No. 3 (1911) Reports
from His Majesty s Representatives abroad respecting the Institution knows as the Refer
endum, pp. 3 sqq. Cf. S. R. Money, The Refaetitkm among the English* A
Manual of Sub
missions to the People in the American States with an Introduction by M. St. Loe Strachey, 1912.
s
Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act (Imperial Art, 63 &: 64. Viet, Cap. 12,
Sec. 128). For the application of the referendum not only in the Commonwealth but in the
individual States see Commonwealth of Australia. Papers with reference to ttte Referendum and
its
Working in Australia, 1911 and Commonwealth of Australia. Ftatfier Report with reference
to the Referendum and its Working in AxstralitL, 1911. This very year Natal held a referendum
on the question of entering die Union of South Africa (Natal Correspondence respectitig
an Act for a Referendum in Natal on the Draft South African Union Act* 1910). And Queens
land had just introduced the. referendum ypdcr circumstances calculated, to attract the
attention of the TfrigMi legislator {E&nlntrgh Review, No. 431, January 1910, Art. VH:
The Referendum,* vol. cod, pp. 143-44).
4 See in the
Speaker for January 19, 1909, the scheme expounded by J. A- Nelson at the
New Reform Club. See the same author s, The Crisis cf Liberalism. Mw
Issues of Demo
cracy, 1909, pp. 32 sqq.

5
On the Radical sideby the Nation (February 26, 1910, Cf. G. Lowes Dickinson s letter
in the issue of March 5).On the Unionist side by A. V. (The Referendum and i&
E>icey
Critics. Quarterly Review* No. 423, April 1910, vol com, p. 538).
337
even appear that on the eve of the Lords rejection of the Budget
Asquith had played with the idea of introducing into Parliament
a very short Bill, an emergency measure, which without making
the referendum a permanent part of British constitutional
machinery would submit the Budget of 1909 to the direct vote
of the nation.1 And again on April 28, 1910, in his last official
letter to King Edward he informed the King that he was prepar
ing a Bill to take in the last resort a referendum upon the proposed
2
restriction of the Lords* prerogatives. But it was undoubtedly
the opposition of the Liberal members, headed by Asquith, which
prevented the referendum being adopted by the Conference.
Why did they object to it?
To understand their objection imagine that a liberal Govern
ment had carried in the Commons a Bill which the Lords then
threw out. What could the Government do under the existing
system? Appeal to the country by dissolving Parliament and hold
ing a General Election which amounted, no doubt, to a referen
dum on the particular Bill but at the same time, if the Govern
ment won at the polls, to a vote of confidence in the ministry,
embracing its programme as a whole and the general character of
policy. What could the Government do
its under the same cir
cumstances if the referendum existed? Invite the electorate not to
return for their several constituencies the members of a new
House of Commons but throughout the kingdom as a whole to
decide for or against the measure in question. Suppose the referen
dum went against the Government. It would be still in office
though definitely defeated. Not even a favourable General Elec
tion could make good the loss of authority it had sustained. The
sovereignty of Parliament or rather of that executive committee
of the Parliamentary majority which is the Cabinet would no
longer be absolute. The government machine as the English had
become accustomed to work it would be thrown completely out
of gear.
But there was another and more immediate reason, a reason of
1 The Timer, October 10, 1909.
* Sir vol. ii, p. 710. At the beginning of the following
Sidney Lee, King Edward VII . . .
year when he introduced his Parliament Bifl Asquith stated that he would not absolutely
exclude tHp referendum which might be practicable in some exceptional case* but could
not accept it as *a normal part of our regular constitutional machine*. (H. of C, February
2,1, 1911. PafKamentary Deforfes, Commons 1911. 5th Series, voL -m, pp. 1750-51.) This
amounted to an admission, that he might have contemplated recourse to the referendum
as an exceptional emergency measure.
338
political expediency rather than principle, which made it

impos
sible for the Liberal ministers given the existing composition of
Parliament to accept a referendum. The fundamental or constitu
tional law about which the Unionist Opposition felt certain that
the mass of the electorate, however democratic on a host of other
questions, would refuse to follow the demand of a democratic

government for its repeal, was the law which at the opening of the
nineteenth century effected a legislative union between Ireland
and Great Britain. The eighty Nationalist members of the House
of Commons were therefore inevitably hostile to the referendum.
But since January they had been the cornerstone of the ministerial
majority. They supported Government Bills in which they had
no which indeed they were even strongly opposed, in
interest, to
return for the promise of a Home Rule Bill in the immediate
future. But if that Bill even when passed by the House of Com
mons could be rejected by the direct vote of a hostile British
electorate, their contract with the Government would be broken,
and its
majority would be destroyed by their secession. In the
intention of those Unionists who advocated it, the referendum
was simply a weapon to destroy that majority.
On November 10 an official communication informed the

public that the Conference had failed to reachan agreement and
on the following day Asquith visited King George at Sandring-
ham. But the visit did not result in the expected announcement of
an immediate dissolution. The King, it would seem, asked per
mission as his father had done the year before to approach first
the Unionist leaders and Asquith had refused, whereupon the
King refused Asquith s request for an immediate dissolution be
fore Parliament reassembled, and the Parliament Bill was sent up
to the Lords. In Unionist circles it was reported that Asquith,
unable to carry his point, had tendered his resignation.
But he did not resign. On November 15, the day when Parlia
ment reassembled, a Cabinet Council was held and Asquith had
two interviews with Lord Knollys, one during, the other after the
council. On the i6th the King, who had come up to London,
received in audience the two leaders of the Liberal party and Lord
339
CONSTITUTIONAL CRISIS AND THH LORDS
Kiiollys visited Asquith, while the King returned

to Sandring-
ham, fixing his* final return to London for the 29 th. The debates in
Parliament throw sufficient light on what was happening. Lord
Rosebery again moved his resolutions of the previous winter and
the House of Lords announced intention to proceed with their
its
discussion, concurrently with the debate on the Parliament Bill

which Lord Crewe reintroduced. But Lord Crewe let it be
understood that he only did so for form s sake since after the
failure of the Committee no compromise between the two parties
seemed possible and the Government were resolved not to accept
any amendment. Lord Lansdowne replied by embodying in a
formal resolution the amendments to the Government Bill which
the Oppositionwould propose. The Parliament Bill forbade the
House of Lords to alter or amend a Money Bill and left it to the
Speaker to decide whether or not a Bill belonged to this category.

The Opposition wanted the question decided not by the Speaker
but by a Joint Committee on which both Houses would be repre
sented. The Parliament Bill provided that if in three successive
sessions the House of Lords had thrice rejected Bill passed by <*
the Commons it would oeconie law in spite ol their rejection.

The Opposition proposed that after two disagreements in the
course of two successive sessions, the third time the two Houses
should not vote separately but that, as was provided by the Con
stitution of several Colonies, 1 both Houses should hold a joint
sitting to settle the question bv a majority of votes and that in
issues of exceptional gravity s referendum should be taken. But
the Government allowed the House of Lords only an exceedingly
brief period in which to pronounce upon these amendments. For
even before Lord Lansdowne rose on November 16 to explain
their character, Lord Crewe had announced a dissolution for the
28th acting on the supposition that the Lords would not accept
the Parliament Bill That is to say, the King had given way and
.
promised that if the electorate were consulted and the Election

1
The Commonwealth of Australia in 1900, the Transvaal in 1906, the Orange River
Colony in 1907, and the Union of South A&ica whose constitution came into force at the
very time when the British Parliament was discussing Lloyd George s Budget, hi England
waere the Upper House was numerically almost equal to the Lower and almost wholly
Conservative die system was obviously too favourable to the Conservative party. In the
Dominions it produced no such effect. In Australia the Senate in virtue of its constitution
was a less conservative body than the House of Representatives, and the operation of this
particular piece of constitutional machinery produced results which seemed paradoxical
{Sir John A. Marriott, The Mechanism ofthe Modern Staff, vol. i, pp. 25152.)
340
produced an adequate majority for the Government, he would

1
carry out its wishesby putting pressure on the Lords. The debates
which ensued were lifeless, conducted before almost empty
benches. No one thought of anything but the approaching Elec
tion. The essential portions of the Budget were passed and the
remainder left over until the early months of the new Parliament
before the financial year ended.
The Election was held in the first half of December only ten
months after the last. The Unionist
speakers everywhere brought
Home Rule to the Were
the voters, they asked, prepared
fore.
once again to place the majority in Parliament at the mercy of

Redmond and his crew? Balfour, moreover, expressly declared
that if the Unionists obtained a majority in the ne\v House, they
would not regard their victory as a mandate to restore Protection
without having first submitted the question to a referendum.
This piece of strategy won him a certain number of gains in Lan
cashire (a net gain of four seats in the borough and four in the
county divisions). The Unionists also won two or three more

seats in the South and West. But these gains were only just suffi
cient to balance the Liberal gains in the poorer districts of London
and in the North of England. The Parliament returned in January
had contained 273 Unionists. There were 272 in the Parliament
elected in December. There had been 275 Liberal members in the
late Parliament. There were 272 in the Parliament just elected.
There were nowr 42 Labour members in place of 40; and 84 in
stead of 82 Nationalists. Obviously the parties had, after the
abnormal Election of 1906, found their level in January 1910, for
if the Liberals were, it would seem, mildly disappointed by these
2
results (they had counted upon a gain of thirty seats), the
Unionists were equally disappointed by the stability of the minis
terialist combination. And its solidity was the more remarkable
because the Prime Minister had taken up the Unionist challenge,

and placed Home Rule in the forefront of the programme which
it the task of the new Parliament to cany
would be out, once the
question of the House of Lords had been settled.
1
For the circumstances of this surrender see the debates H. of C, August 7 and 8, 1911,
especially Asqiuth s speech of August 7. (Parliamentary Debates, Commons 1911, 5th
Series, vol. xxix, pp. 810-11.) Also Sir John Marriott *The Crown and the Crisis* (Fort-
nightly Review, September 1911 EUS., vol. xc, pp. 448 sqq.).
2
Round Table No. 9, December 1912, vol. iii, p. 104.
341
By relating the lively and often violent debates which occupied

the two. Houses from Februaryuntil August 1911, the historian
might easily give the impression that the struggle between the
two parties had brought the country to the brink of revolution.
Nothing could be more false. The agitation was only on the sur
face. The December Election had been surprisingly peaceful and
half a million voters who had taken the trouble to poll in January
decided to stay at home in December. In the eyes of the electorate,
of the country as a whole, the question was settled, Without
or passion the nation witnessed the sturdy efforts of the
interest
Conservative stalwarts to keep their flag flying to the last. On
February 21 Asquith introduced in the Commons the Govern
ment s Parliament Bill. It was exactly the same as the Bill of the
previous year. It passed the first reading on February 22 after two
days debate by a majority of 124, its second on March 2 after
three days debate by a majority of 125. When the clauses were
debated the obstruction was so persistent that it could be overcome
only by the Speaker s constant application of the closure. The
debates which began on April 3 did not end until May 15 when
the final voting yielded a majority of 121 votes for the Bill out of
603. By way of rejoinder as soon at the session opened the Con
servative leader in the House of Lords, Lord Lansdowne, an
nounced his intention to introduce a Bill to alter the composition
of the House. And Lord Balfour of Burleigh with Lord Lans-
downe s approval brought in a Bill to give the referendum a
place in the British Constitution. On
March 3 1 before Parliament
rose for the Easter recess Lord Lansdowne carried in the Lords an
address to the King asking him to permit the introduction of a
Bill limiting the prerogative and powers of the Crown is so far
as they related to the creation of peerages and to writs of sum
mons*. On May 5 after the recess he introduced his Bill. The
reformed House of Lords would consist of a hundred Lords of
Parliament to be elected by their peers but who would be eligible
only if they fulfilled certain conditions laid down in a schedule, 120
by the members of the House of Commons, grouped in a
elected
number of electoral districts, a hundred appointed by the King
342
on the advice of the Cabinet, in proportion to the respective

strength of both parties in the Commons, seven spiritual
Lords of Parliament, the two archbishops and five bishops
elected by the episcopate, and finally sixteen peers who had
occupied important judicial positions. With the exception of

the archbishops, who would hold their seats so long as they
occupied their sees, and the judges, who would hold their
every peer would hold his seat for twelve years. A
seats for life,
quarter of the membership of the House would be elected every

diree years.
The Sill was certainly far more radical than the Bill Lord Rose-
bery had contemplated the year before, and far more than any
of the Bills proposed by those who during the last forty years had
sought to strengthen the House of Lords by rendering it more
modern. So restricted was the field of choice that the hundred
peers theoretically elected by their fellows would be of necessity
those high officials, sailors, soldiers, Viceroys of India or retired
Colonial Governors, for which former Bills had made a special
place,and 220 of these new Lords of Parliament that is to say, a
large majority of their number, would be chosen more or less
directly by the majority in the Commons. When Lord Lansdowne
first
spoke of introducing his Bill many Conservatives took alarm,
and their alarm increased when its detailed provisions became
known. One peer declared that he was willing to vote for the first
reading but only on the understanding that he accepted nothing
more than the general principle of a Bill whose clauses were open
to such serious objections. Another declared that he could not
even vote for the first reading. Why, asked Lord Rosebery, be so
imprudent as to bring in a Bill instead of proceeding, as he had
desired in 1910, by way of resolution? Dissension reigned in the
Unionist camp between the diehards determined to defend at all
costs the privileges of the Upper House as at present constituted,
and those who to save it brought forward a measure more
radical than the proposals of the Government. A Chamber
which presented such a spectacle of internal strife was not in a
favourable position to embark upon the discussion of die
Parliament Bill.
But at the very moment when the final struggle seemed on the
point of opening, the same thing occurred which had occurred
the previous year. The warring parties concluded an armistice.
343
The Coronation was approaching. And an Imperial Conference
was to meet in London. For a month the Houses of Parliament
suspended their sidings and the parries their polemics. Much
comment was aroused by a fancy dress ball given at one of the
great London hotels during the Coronation
festivities by F, E.
Smith, the future Lord Bkkenhead, a young Member of Parlia

ment who for the past year both in the House and at public meet
ings had attracted attention by his brilliant rapier thrusts. The
leading statesmen of both parties
were invited. Asquith and Lord
Lansdowne came and were chatting together when their host
introduced another guest in the costume of 2 peer of the realm
wearing a baron s mantle and coronet and on the coronet the
number 499. He
impersonated one of those 500 peers wliich the
Government, it tt-as said, intended, if necessary, to create to en
sure the passing of its Bill. A peer wrote an anonymous letter to
The Times protesting against such flippancy. 1 But we may wonder
how many shared his indignation. In fact this fancy dress ball was
a revelation. It brought home to the English themselves that the
struggle between the parties was not after
ail so very serious and
that die invective used by speakers in Parliament was often the

violent language of barristers who, after abusing each other in
court, walk down the street arm-in-arm. An Englishman excel
lently placed to observe the political drama from
the wings was
undoubtedly tltmlcing of the ball at Claridges when he noted in

his diary OH June 29 that both parties seem to be playing different
2
parts in a carefully arranged masquerade*.
1
The Times, May ^6, 1911. According ic Jacques B^rdo-Js: the Setter wai written by
Lord Rosebery : L Angleicne ra&cale. Esson fc Psyjwlogic Scriole (1906-1913)* 191 3, p. 207.
* Sir Almeric
Htzzoy, June 29, 1911 (Memoirs, vol. ii, p. 451). T/ie Times had published
die aacnyrnocs peer s letter of protest under the title A Political Masquerade*. See to die
4
same dOfect the following reflections of a French witness: "Every diy the outcry is keyed to
a higher pitch, abuse is followed by threais. **THs is nothing ihon of a Revolution" we
hear it said. But there is universal calm, not the cairn which sometimes marks the eve of a
cataclysm, but the genuine ralm of everyday life. More than that there is even a gaiety in
the air and from rime to time outbursts of laughter which mock the forebodings of storm
treat the English revolution of to-morrow or the day after as the tail of a stray comet
caught in die earth s atmosphere, and envisage the lists so solemnly opened between the
Lords and the People, heredity and popular election, as a game of cricket played between
a famous eleven and a rival tram If it did not involve the possibility of another General
Election in May with its labour and expense, so soon after the January Election, the nation
would be inclined to regard die battle as the most exciting sport of the season of 1911.*
(Augustin Fflon, *La Chambre des Lords Ha fe Passe et dans TAvernr*. R&we des Dasx
Monties, May 1, 1911,voL rtfmriij, pp. 101 sqq.)
344
The House of Lords had begun to debate the Parliament Bill

sent up to It by the House of Commons six weeks earlier and had
akeady passed second reading before the Coronation. It did
Its
not reject it but was content to mutilate it by various amendments.

It would not be for the Speaker to decide whether a Bill were or
were not a Money Bill over which the Lords had no control but
for a Joint Committee so constituted that Conservative influence
would preponderate. And the Joint Committee was empowered
to demand a referendum when for the third time the Houses had
disagreed, finally, Irish Home Rule was excluded from the scope
of the measure. There were certain amendments, Lord Lansdowne
declared on July 20, the day when the Bill passed Its second readr-
tn^, which his friends and himself would never renounce, so long
of action remained to them. His meaning was not
as "their liberty
doubtful and the last words presaged imminent defeat. For that
very day Balfour received a from Asquith informing him
letter
that the amendments which the Lords had inserted in the Bill were
unacceptable, that it would

be sent back to the Lords in Its original
form and that if the)* refused to bow to the will of the Commons
twice expressed, he would ask the King, with the certainty that
his request would be granted (he had been sure of mis ever since
November 15 and the royal pledge had just been explicitly re
newed) to make use of his prerogative to create the necessary 1
number of peers to force the Bill through the Upper House. At
a large Unionist meeting held next day at Lansdowne House, the
leaders of the party informed their followers that the hour of
surrender had strucL Lord Lansdowne and Balfour had an
audience with the King at His Majesty s request in which it would
seem he begged them not to compel him by their obstinacy to
take a step he loathed, and on July 23, the former with the support
of Balfour and Lord Rosebery publicly advised the acceptance of
the Bill. For this there was no need actually to vote for the Bill on
the division but simply to abstain from voting against It. Two
hundred and thirty Unionist peers promised to adopt this attitude.
1See J. A. Spender and C. AsqraA, JJfe qfLaJ Cfa/iwf ^ -Asg^ voL i, pp. 329 sqq.
Chap. aocv- Appendix. A
fist of 249 -whom Asquith. regarded as suilabk penora to receive
a peerage on this eventuality.
345
It was therefore with every prospect of success that on August 9
when the Parliament Bill was returned to the House of Lords un
altered except for a few very slight retouches. Lord Lansdowne
explained the uselessness of further resistance and contented him-

self with expressing the hope that at some future date another
Statute might restore the balance of the constitution.
But if Lord Lansdowne and Balfour had the support of the
Northcliffe Press, which like themselves had in 1909 thrown in
their lot with the belligerents after considerable hesitation, they
were not conscious of a well-disciplined army at their back ready
to obey their signal of retreat. In the Observer Garvin continued
his noisy protests and the Morning Post preached resistance to the
last ditch.In the Commons on July 22, the extremists of the
Opposition by keeping up a persistent uproar prevented Asquith
from obtaining a hearing. In the Lords, Lord Halsbury, who for
the past month had been leader of the group known as the die-
1
hards, became a hero in whose honour a banquet was given.
This opposition which divided the Opposition itself might prove
formidable. If they mustered a hundred it would not be enough for
Lord Lansdowne and his friends to abstain from voting if the Bill
were to pass. Some of them would be obliged to go further and
positively vote for a Bill they detested. This actually happened
after scenesof tumult under the eyes of an indifferent nation. The
Bill passed its third reading in the Lords on August 10 by 131 to
114 votes. This artificial majority rested on the votes of thirty-
seven Unionist peers, the two archbishops, and eleven bishops.
Now that we must pass judgment on the reform, thus at last
accomplished, we are conscious of a certain, hesitation. We are too

remote, we fed, from the event, yet too near it. For up to the pre
sent the Statute has never been put into operation and the Parlia
ment Act, twenty years after it became law, cannot be regarded
as a living dement of the British Constitution. The British Parlia
ment has passed an Act introducing universal suffrage (including
the suffrage of women), an Act disestablishing the Church in
1
For these final struggles see Alice Wilson Fox, TheEarf of Hobbury Lord High Oum-
ctflor (1823-i92f), 1929, pp. 231 sqq.
346
Wales1 and an Act granting Home Rule to Ireland without any

need to make use of the provisions of this Act of 1911. Does this
mean that the House of Lords suffered that year a more crushing
defeat than was believed at the time and will never dare to employ
the suspensory veto it was permitted to retain? It may be so.
But on the other hand we know what exceptional events have
during these twenty years diverted from its course the current of
English history in common with that of the entire world. Who
would dare to prophesy that the consequences of this upheaval
will be permanent and that one day or another under circum
stances we cannot anticipate, the Parliament Act will not recover
its
importance? In our uncertainty of the future we must endea
vour to forget a past still too close in 193 1 and by an effort of the
imagination return in spirit to that summer of 1911 when the
Parliament Bill had been passed at last by both Houses and enquire
what impression the event produced at the time and what were
its immediate results. It was obvious that, on one point at any rate,
the British Constitution had ceased to be a Constitution resting

on unwritten custom and had become a written Constitution,
that the relations between the two Houses were henceforward de
fined, if not by a special constitutional law which could be
altered only by an exceptionally difficult process, at least by an
express Statute whose terms were unambiguous, that this Statute

established a supremacy of the House of Commons, absolute in
matters of finance, almost absolute in all others and that the
British political systemwas therefore on the way to become
unicameral. But the Conservatives, the supporters of the Lords*
check upon the Lower House were not slow to detect an advan
tage for themselves which no one it would seem, had noticed.
In matters of finance, as we have just said, the Parliament Act
seemed to render the Lower House omnipotent. The Opposition
had in vain attempted to secure the reference to ajoint Committee
of both Houses of the question, whether or not a Bill passed by the
Commons was strictly a Money Bill and as such exempt from the
1 For
greater accuracy we must add that, ifit bad not been for the wax, the Act disestab-
lishing the Church in "Wales would have become kw in 1914 against the wifl of the Upper
House but that finally in 1919 an Act was passed in doe form by both Houses postponing
the faf at which ^jyf*aKK<hTtwnt should take effect and introducing certain amendments
favourable to the Anglican clergy: 9 &
10 Geo. 5, Cap. 65: An Act to conrnuir in office
the Welsh Commissioners appointed under the Welsh Church Act, 1914, to postpone the
date of disestablishment, and to make further provision with respect to the temporalities
o and marriages in, the Church in Wales (Welsh Chunk [Temporalities] Act, 1919).
347
controlof the Lords. The Speaker elected by the House of Com
mons was to decide the question without appeal from his decision.
The utmost that the Speaker, who was somewhat alarmed at the
responsibility thus placed upon his shoulders, could obtain from
the Government, when the Bill was discussed in the Commons
for the last time at the end of July, was the annual appointment
of two members of the House to act as his advisers.1 But the posi
tion and functions of the Speaker in England, sanctioned as they
were by the unanimous approval of public opinion, must not be
confused with those of the president of a popular assembly on the
Continent, a party member elected by a party. Once elected the
Speaker, whatever the party to which he originally belonged and
whatever party possesses the majority in the House, is always re-
elected, In his constituency he will be returned unopposed. He is
not a politician but a judge. In December 191 I, when the Finance
Bill passed by the Commons was about to be sent up to the Lords
the Speaker decided with all the authority which attached to his
decisions that in virtue of certain amendments which bad been
incorporated into it, the measure could no longer be regarded as
a Money Bill within the meaning of the Parliament Act, in other
words that the Lords were free to reject it. 2 Closely scanned, this
decision affirmed by implication that the Budget of 1909 also had
not been a Money Bill in the strict and legal sense, in other words
that the House of Lords had not exceeded its competence in re
3
jecting it. To obviate the dangers the Government might incur
as a result of this decision, the Chancellor of the
Exchequer de
clared in 1913 that the Budget would consist of two portions, a
.
Finance Bill which would simply renew, increase or reduce the
annual taxes and a Revenue Bill containing all measures whose
1
1 & 2, Geo. 5,
Cap. 13, Sec, 1(3): See on this point Lord UBswater s resections, A
Speaker s ContmetOaries.
1
In its original form die Parliament B31 forbade an zmmdmprtt to be introduced into a
Bodget whida in die Speaker s judgment would remove It from die category of a Money
BilL Tbe prohibition was dropped in April (H. of C., April n, 1911, Parliamentary Debates,
Commons 1911, 5th Series, voL judv, pp. 387 sqq.), and it was this mflTng victory winch
die Speaker s decision enabled die Conservatives to exploit. (H. of C., December 15, 1911,
ibid,, voL Trrrrij p. 2,707.)
* This is
expressly recognized hy Lord Uflswater (The Speaker of 191 1) in his memoirs.
On
(A Sjpeofeer** CommenterifS, voL I, p. 103.) what clauses of die Budget did he base his
decision? Probably on some involving the regulation of the drink traffic,
possibly on one
which concerned the valuation of landed property. (H. of L., December 15, 1911, Lord
Morky*s speech, ParL Deb., Lords 1911, sm Ser., voL x, p. 1137.) T. M. Healy, Letters
and Leaders ofmy Day* voL n, p. 507, insists on the difficulties with which the Government
was faced during the session of 1912 in consequence of the Speaker s
348
provisions aflected the general legislation of the United

fiscal
1
Kingdom, The former the Lords could not touch, the latter they
could amend or reject as they thought fit. When in 1914 the
Government could not find the necessary rime to complete the
discussion of the Revenue Bill, Lloyd George attempted to insert
certain fiscal reforms in the Finance Bill. But he was recalled to
order by the Speaker and found himself involved in inextricable
difficulties? that is to say, counter to all expectation it seemed on
the eve of the Great War that, so far as financial measures were
concerned, the Parliament Act might after all, have diniinished
of increasing the powers of the House of Commons. There
instead
was reason to wonder whether in some respects there had not
been a return not only to the period before 1911 but to the period
before 1861.
There remained the other part of the which had monopo Bill
lized public attention, the provisions which transformed the
Lords* absolute veto into a suspensory veto. The duration of
Parliament was reduced from seven to five years. If the Govern
ment maintained the old custom of dissolving Parliament a year
before the expiration of its legal term, the Parliament elected in
December 1910 would be dissolved at the end of 1914 at latest.
The session of 1912 must therefore be devoted by the House of
Commons to passing all the Statutes it was determined to force
1
H. of C., April 23, 1913 (ParEzareentoy Debates* Commons 1913, voL ii, p. iSo) The
necessary to free the Budget from these non-financial provisions was the more urgent
because the Conservatives had devised another expedient fbt obstructing the radical polky
of employing taxation for purposes of social reform. Custom allowed many taxes to be
levied by anticipation before the provisions of the Budget had been actually passed. A
Member of Parliament of independent views, X. Gibson Bowles, brought a. case before
the Courts to test the legality of the practice. The judges decided that it was illegal And
the Government was obliged to pass a Bill which* while it legalized the practice, strictly
period within which the House of Commons must pass the Budget after die
Kmitf-fl tfae
anticipatory collectionof its taxes had begun. 3 Geo. 5, Cap. 3 : An Act to give statutory
Hmited period to resolutions varying or renewing taxation, and to make pro
effect for a
vision with respect to payments and deductions made on account of any temporary tax
between the fati- of the expiration and renewal of the tax (IVwiozl CoJfaefum ef Tares
Att, 1913).
C., June 22* 1914 (Pad. Deb., Commons 1914, Sth Ser_, voL ban, pp. 567 sqq,}.
1 H. of
June 29, 1914 (ibid., vol. Lxiv, pp. 175-6). C Sir Almeric Rtzroy, June 23 : *Lk>yd George
*f+m* never at a loss for expedients to humiliate die Government of which he is a member.
Lord Morley described Asqinth as "writhing** muW the indignity of the position in which
he was placed last night when the Finance Minister fryi to tajre back fralf the Budget.
How the gjfirial* of the Treasury could have been parties to the blunder passed Lord
Motley s understanding. He thinks Lloyd George confuses them with a torrent of reason
ing, the readiness and plausibility of which obscure the radical unsoundness. Lloyd George s
sin is lack of concentration: the timne mat should be given to thinking out these high pro
blems is frittered away in interruptions, now from this person, now from that anybody
in short, to whom he is accessible and these are legion." (Memoirs, voL n, p. 553.)
349
upon the Lords. After this, it would have only
to wait and see
whether three times, in
1912, 1913 and 1914, the House of
Lords would throw out those Bills and in that case after the third
rejection, give the Statutes rejected the force of kw as though the

1
Upper House had no existence. But the question would still re
main to what extent in the case of each of these Bills the House of
Commons or the House of Lords represented the real opinion of
the country, what risk therefore by thus deciding to brush aside
the opposition of the Upper House, the former would incur, of
arousing at the approaching Election a dangerous reaction of pub
lic opinion and how far it would shrink from running that risk.
Time would show. A drama had begun whose denouement was
reserved for 1914.
IE LLOYD GEORGE AND THE NATIONAL

INSURANCE ACT
For the moment victory lay with tie Liberal party and within
the party was the Prime Minister who had carried off the
it
honours of the battle. It was he who had successfully conducted

the struggle as a lawyer not as a demagogue and leaving to the
Conservatives such unpractical novelties as the Reform of the
House of Lords and the referendum, had presented his solution as
fundamentally conservative, nothing more than the formulation
in a written law of what, up till 1909, had always been regarded
as the constitutional usage of the country in regard to the relations
between the two Houses. Throughout the contest Lloyd George
had been relegated to the second place. It was even rumoured that
in the Committee of eight he had opposed to Asquith s scepticism
an unexpected trust in methods of conciliation and had believed
it
possible to settle the question by
an amicable agreement with
the Unionist leaders. 2 Indeed, he had gone further and actually
discussed with Balfour the formation of a Coalition Cabinet, with
1 to the interpretation of the daiiy? in the Parlia

Sec howevfer for certain difficulties as
ment Hll providing tnat a Bill twice passed by the Hoose of Commons should become
law even after the Lords had thrown it out for the third tune. Lord Ullswater, A Speaker s
Commentaries, 1925, voL i, pp. 112-5.
* W. F. Spender, The Prime Minister, 1920, p- 171-
350
NATIONAL INSURANCE ACT
or without Asquith, to settle on a non-party basis not
only the
question of the House of Lords but even the question of Home
Rule, and perhaps to introduce some form of compulsory mili
1
tary service. In short, this man
of genius had been no longer the
demagogue whose of the Boer War, the
fiery denunciations
Education Bill of 1902, and the Lords opposition to the
Budget
were notorious. He had been the conciliator, the arbitrator whose
skill had -disarmed Unionist
hostility during his occupation of the
Board of Trade between 1906 and 1908. He had indeed failed.
None the less he continued to gain ground at the expense of his
real rival in the Cabinet. There can be no doubt that the fact that
he was the scion of a noble family was a disadvantage rather than
an advantage to Winston Churchill in the new epoch of English
history now opening. He was not given a place in 1910 among the
four Liberal representatives on the Joint Committee. His
vanity,
2
it is said, was hurt, and the manner in which in 191 1 he made use
of the troops during some serious labour troubles damaged his

popularity with the working class. Meanwhile, Lloyd George,
leaving to the Premier the task of delivering the final assault upon
a citadel admittedly doomed, returned to his role of social re
former.
When he introduced the Budget of 1911 he could congratulate
himself on the success of his fiscal reforms of 1909. Thanks as he
confessed to the years of prosperity through which trade was
passing, the new sources of revenue instituted by the Budget of
1909 made sufficient provision for the constantly increasing ex
pense of the navy and the social services. The cost of the old age
pensions had risen from 9,790,000 to 12,415,000, more than
double the amount originally contemplated by Asquith. Never
theless, not only was the additional expenditure met, but the
national debt was reduced at a rate certainly less rapid than during
the first three years of Liberal government, but very rapid never
theless. And Lloyd
George was convinced that the taxes imposed
in 1907 would also enable him to meet the increased expenditure
he must expect in the ensuing years. In the first place, there were
the navy estimates. But it might be hoped that in view of the
1 W.
F. Roch (Mr. Lloyd George and tJif War, 1920, p. 51). The Times, March 20, 1930:
Obituary Notice of Lord Balfour. J. A. Spender and Cyril Asquith, Life of Lord Oxford and
Asqutih, vol. i, p. 287.
*
Comte d HaussonviUe *L elections et la situation polititpie a: Angleterre (Revue des
Deux MondtSi February 1, 1911, voL cdxxrvii, p. 561).
351
great effort the Government had decided to make in 1909, these
would not increase after 1912. Then there was the expenditure
on the social services. An Act was passed during this session of
1911 to extend the operation of the Old Age Pensions* Act. And
most important of all, Lloyd George carried an important meas
ure of national insurance against sickness and êmployment. To
be sure, Llewellyn Smith at the Board of Trade had been given
ample rime to prepare it. As early as 1909 Lloyd George had
promised it and Llewellyn Smith was free to begin to work upon
it as soon as he had given the finishing touches to the scheme of
Labour Exchanges. In normal circumstances it would have been

passed by Parliament in 1910. It was not the unreal and abstract
question of the rights of the House of Lords but this Bill which
from the beginning of May 1911 till the middle of December held
the attention of Parliament and country, which had been kept
waiting for it for two years.
In the important speech he delivered in the House of Commons

on May 4, Lloyd George explained the nature of the risks against
which the worker would be insured death, sickness, and unem
ployment. So tar as life insurance was concerned sufficient, it
might well be thought, had been accomplished by private enter
prise and there was no need for State intervention. In fact, forty-
two million life-insurance policies had been issued in the United
Kingdom. But it was not the same with insurance against sickness
and unemployment. Not more than six to seven million were
insured against sickness, and even so the trade unions provided
only sick pay, not medical treatment. And only one million four
hundred thousand were insured against unemployment, barely a
third or a quarter of the hands employed in industries in which it
was a constant threat. If, therefore, the workers were to be effec
tively insured against the double risk the State must intervene.
That intervention must not take the form of unconditional grants
the system which England had just adopted in imitation of New
Zealand for old age pensions. Nor on the other hand must the
State be content to make insurance compulsory for employer and
employee without granting any financial aid, as Bismarck s Ger-

352
many had done in the case of insurance against sickness. They

must adopt the system Bismarck had devised to insure the Ger
man worker against disablement and old age, the system of a
triple contribution by the workers, the employers and the State.
This general principle would be applied in the following fashion
to provide insurance against sickness and invalidity on the one
hand, and against unemployment on the other.
The German system of insurance against sickness distinguished
of workers according to the rate of \vages. In
five different classes
England there would be only one rate of contribution, 4d. a week

for the employee, 3d. for the employer, and 2d. added by the
State. The only distinction made would be to relieve of a part of
the contribution workers whose daily wage did not exceed 2s. 6d.
and that deduction would be greater when the wage was only 2s.
or is. 6d.1 The deduction would be charged to the employer and
thus be an indirect penalty on underpayment. Medical treatment
would be provided, the services of a midwife and maternity
benefit, special treatment for tuberculosis, sick pay tor a definite
period beyond which insurance against sickness would be replaced

old age
by insurance against disablement, a species of anticipatory
a week. The contributions would be
pension at the rate of 5$.
collected according to the German method, the employer being
to an employee, to attach to
obliged, whenever he paid his wages
his book two stamps whose value was equal to his own and the
employee s contribution. The of the Act, the

ad-ministration
disbursement of
management of the funds thus collected, and the
paymentswould be entrusted to the societies already in existence,

sprung from private enterprise, which need only comply with
certain prescribed conditions tobe approved*. The benefits of the
Act might but need not be extended to those who without work
or principally
ing for a wage depended for a livelihood exclusively
upon their work and to those who having
been subject to the
law ceased after a certain term of years to come
provisions of the
within its scope, and who would be allowed to continue their
contributions. But a measure intended to be universal must make
for those who did not wish to be members of any
provision
approved society or whom none of these societies would adroit
1
For women die rate would be lower (3d. instead of pd.). The employee woold pay
less, 3d. instead of 4d,, the contributions by the employer and the State remaining the
353
to membership, an inferior class both in health and morals. For
their benefit a special system was set up less advantageous to
themselves, more completely a State service, and operated by the
Post Office. According to the Government s estimate the total
number of persons uninsured both compulsorily and option
fifteen million. The first year the insur
ally would amount to
ance would cost the employers .9,000,000 and the workers
.1 1 ,000,000, a total of .20,000,000. The cost to the State,
nothing in 1911-12, would be .1,743,000 in 1912-13, rise to
.3,359,000 in 1913-14, and reach its maximum .4,563,000 in
1915-16.
This, so far as sickness and invalidity were concerned, was the
It was on a larger scale than the German. The
system proposed.
numbers involved were larger, and the benefits given more con
siderable. 1 In dealing with unemployment they were tackling a
the German
question from which in spite of Bismarck s pledges
legislature had recoiled, a problem indeed which no government
on the face of the earth had hitherto grappled. There were no
actuarial statistics on which legislation could be based, as in the
case of sickness. It must therefore necessarily be experimental.
The system proposed, at which the department had been at work
for the last two years, would apply to begin with to certain indus
tries described as the most precarious , those in which experience
had proved that the periodical periods of unemployment were

most acutely felt, the engineering trades on the one hand (engin
eering in the strict sense, shipbuilding, coachbuilding), the build
ing trade on the other. In these two branches of industry the Bill
provided for the compulsory payment of contributions by the
employers and men (2|d. from either party), and a supplementary

contribution by the State, to take the form of an annual payment
of a sum equal to a third of the joint payment made by the em
ployers and workmen. Relief would consist of a weekly payment
to the unemployed man, 75. a week in the engineering trades, 6s.
in the building trade. The payment would begin from the second
week of unemployment and could not be continued longer than
fifteen weeks. The Labour Exchanges set up in 1909 would pro
vide the machinery for operating the new law. The unemployed
1 It
was estimated that in the United Kingdom a third of the population would benefit
by tbe new measure. In Germany not more than a fifth benefited by the provisions of Bis
marck s legislation. (Alfred P. HiBier National Insurance and the Commonwealth Nine
teenth Century\ No. 314, August 1911, voL hoc, p. 342.)
354-
workman must apply to the Labour Exchange which would offer
him work. If he refused it, he must justify Hs refusal to the satis
faction of a committee of arbitration appointed for the purpose.
If he made out a satisfactory case he would be entitled to receive
benefit under the Act, which would include in its scope a sixth of
the industrial population, some 2,400,000 workers.
It was estimated that the total cost of the new legislation during
the first year, including the cost of building sanatoria for the treat
ment of consumption would amount to .24,500,000 of which
.2,500,000 would come out of the taxes. In spite of this enormous
outlay the Bill, as Lloyd George was careful to point out at the
conclusion of his statement, must not be regarded as a complete
cure for the evils against which they sought to insure the working
class. To effect a radical cure they must, he said, cut deeper. The
great merit of the Bill was *to lay bare a vast mass of social suffer
ing and to force the State, as a State, to give its attention to it .
But as it stood, the Bill would alleviate a great deal of suffering.

Nor did Lloyd George wish it to be regarded as the work of one
party alone. Introduced as it was on the eve of the Coronation

and the meeting of an Imperial Conference he expressed the hope
that it would be passed by the unanimous vote of the House,
though improved in the course of debate by the friendly colla

boration of all parties. At the outset it seemed possible that his
wish would be granted. At first sight the Bill appeared an im
posing, a magnificent measure. And surely it would be to the
interest of the Opposition to court the favour of the working-
class voter by accepting with inevitable reservations a popular
Bill? But it soon became clear that the Bill ran counter to many
interests, disturbed many deep-rooted habits.
The workers, to whom all the earlier measures of social reform

from the Education Act of 1870 to the Old Age Pensions Act of
1908 had consistently given something without asking for any
thing in exchange, were annoyed at the prospect of a tax imposed
upon them by die State, and, except for the poorest, uniform in
amount. Their annoyance found support from the theorists of
355
Socialism who asked for a measure which did not require any con
tribution from the worker. This was the position adopted by the
indefatigable Philip Snowden, by Bernard Shaw, and by the en
tire Fabian group, which found itself for once in agreement with
the exponents of orthodox Socialism against the moderates of the
Labour party. 1 They pointed out that the new measure favoured
those who because they were comparatively speaking well-to-do
had akeady been able to insure themselves against sickness with
the friendly societies. The others on the contrary, whose poverty
entitled them to the Socialist s special sympathy, must content
themselves with the ludicrously inadequate benefit given to the
Post Office contributors. This group of critics also objected to
the treatment the Bill accorded to women. Should they marry
and cease to work outside their home, they would lose, unless they
were left widows, the entire benefit of their contributions before
marriage. Though they received the maternity benefit of thirty
they could not receive in addition the sickness benefit,
shillings,
although the Bill forbade their employment for four weeks from
the child s birth. In conclusion they blamed the measure for
favouring unduly, in the administration of the insurance, the

friendly societies at the expense ot the trade unions. The tormer,
or some of them at least, had been given a privileged position by
that part of the Bill which dealt with unemployment. But what
trade unions were in a position to tulfil the conditions necessary
to become approved societies ? In the first place out of i .200 only
twenty had a membership of over 10,000. And even these could
not, without bringing their official activities to a standstill, accept
the conditions prescribed by the Bill, the deposit with the Govern
ment of a sum equal to one pound per member, a pledge to devote
all theirfunds to distributing benefit to their members, submission
to the control of auditors appointed by the State, and even so, to
be approved* only if they managed their finances on exactly the
same fines as a friendly society pure and simple. Further, must the
workers be treated by the doctors chosen by the approved
societies ? This was indeed the intention of a measure which
sought by that provision to prevent any fraudulent collusion

1 H. of
C., July 6, 1911. Philip Snowdcn s speech. Letter from Bernard Shaw to "The
Times. (I7ir Times, October 22, 191 1.) The Fabian Society. The Insurance Bill and the Workers,
Critidsms and Amendments of the National Insi*rance Bill. Prepared by the Executive Committee,
lime 1911. The Fabian Society. Tlie National Insurance Bill, October 1911. I7r National
A Criticism with a Preface by Mr. Bernard Shaw.
356
between the insured and his doctor. But the workers revolted in
advance against such bondage.
On this last point the grievances of the medical profession were
the same as those of the working class. Doctors akeady employed
by the friendly societies complained of unfair treatment at their
hands. Would their position become the position of all doctors
who attended working people under a measure which seemed to
place the entire system of insurance against sickness under the
societies* control. They wearied the nation with their
complaints
and finally drew up a statement of their demands which com
prised the following six points. No
insurance of persons in receipt
of a wage of above -2 2s. a week. Free choice of doctor by the
sick person. Medical assistance and midwifery to be withdrawn
from the control of the friendly societies. The doctor s remunera
tion to be fixed in each area by the decision of the majority
of doctors in that area. The
profession to be represented on
the bodies administering the law. The legal establishment in
each locality of a distinct Committee composed entirely of
doctors.
Both these oppositions, that of the workers and that of the
medical profession, were formidable and it would be difficult to
say which of the two caused the Government the more embar
rassment. In their numerical strength the workers had indeed the
advantage of the doctors. If they refused to pay their contribu
tions,how could they be compelled to do so? But on the other
hand their discontent failed to assume, a definite shape. Their
organizations both professional and political, the trade unions and
the Labour part}7 alike, when certain concessions had been made,
declared their acceptance of the Government scheme, compulsory
insurance* and contributions from the workers. The doctors* oppo
sition seemed more dangerous and for months their powerful
organization, the British Medical Association, threatened to

sabotage the Bill. The Opposition in Parliament, at first friendly,
could not resist making capital out of the discontent. At first
Lloyd George seems to have hoped that the Bill could be passed
in a few weeks. When at the beginning ofJune he perceived that
a detailed discussion of the clauses was inevitable he clung to the
hope that it might pass through all its stages before the end of
August and that after eleven months of almost unbroken toil
Parliament having passed the Parliament Bill, the Budget, and the
357
National Insurance Bill could be prorogued until January. The
hope proved vain. When on August 18 the Parliament Bill be
came law, theBudget had not been passed and out of the eighty-
seven clauses of which the National Insurance Bill consisted in its
original form only seventeen had been carried
and these not
without serious amendment. An extraordinary session in the
autumn was therefore inevitable. Mean-while he would do his
best to amend the Bill so as to satisfy all these divergent
interests.
Laborious negotiations were therefore undertaken between the
Chancellor of the Exchequer and the organizations concerned.
Such negotiations, unlike Parliamentary debates, are not recorded
in writing. Nevertheless, they constitute what amounts to a
novel form of parliamentarianism beyond and above the official
Parliamentary government. The friendly societies raised unexpec
ted difficulties. From the outset indeed sporadic complaints had
been made by certain important societies of a Bill which it was
said inevitably transform them from free institutions into
would
instruments of the State, fettered by bureaucratic control. How
ever, on the whole the friendly societies had been satisfied with a
Bill which gave them a position of such importance. But the
Government was now obliged to do justice to the criticisms
brought by the trade unions and above all by the medical body
against the excessive favour shown to the societies, and every
concession made to the trade unions or doctors increased the dis
it in turn became formidable. To be
content of the latter until
complete we must mention another agitation, more comic perhaps
than dangerous, but extremely vocal, especially in London. In its
original form the Bill did not include domestic servants. Later on,
the Government decided to extend its benefits to them. But many
servants, particularly those in the employment of the wealthy,
found the attentions of the law more unwelcome than beneficial.
They listened to the advice of their masters who encouraged
them to protest. Crowded meetings of domestic servants were
held with ladies of title in the chair, to denounce the intolerable
tyranny of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Were they em
ployers and servants alike, to be subjected to an odious system of
red tape, doomed to pass their lives licking stamps ?
358
On October 21 Parliament reassembled. The Government de

clared that nineteen sittings should be sufficient to finish the dis
cussion of the Bill. In the end two additional sittings were granted,
twenty-one in all. That is to say the Bill was divided into a fixed
number of compartments and when the time allotted to the dis
cussion of a particular compartment had been spent, all the
clauses which the Commons had not had time to discuss would
be passed automatically without debate. The Bill, now very con
siderably altered, comprised in its final
form 115 clauses (not
counting the schedules) instead of the eighty-seven of the original
Bill. Not many were made in that portion of the Bill
changes
which dealt with unemployment. The amount of benefit was
made uniform for both the branches of industry concerned and
fixed at ys. a week, and the age at which a worker might, under
certain conditions, benefit by its provision -was lowered from
eighteen to sixteen. In the event Parliament had no time to debate

these clauses, nor did the public raise any objection to this hasty
procedure. The only portion of the Bill in which it was interested

was that which with sickness. On this point the Bill had
dealt
been remodelled. Though on the one hand, to satisfy the farmers,
the contributions due from employers and employees were re
duced if the former continued to pay wages during illness, on the
other hand the benefits given to the insured were increased. In
sured women who subsequently married were enabled to benefit
by the provisions of the law by entering the class of those option
ally insured, and women
in confinement might receive sickness
allowance as well as maternity benefit, if they were insured indi
vidually as well as their husbands.
The number of those eligible
for benefit was increased. The wives and children of insured per
sons might use the sanatoria. And not only were domestic servants
not excluded from the scope of the measure, but special provision
was made for soldiers, and seamen in the merchant service.
sailors,
The conditions imposed on societies which desired to become
as no longer to exclude the trade
approved were modified so
unions, and the friendly societies were obliged to accept still
1
the views
1 The unions however never
gave their unqualified support. See on this point
of an active trade unionist of excremely moderate opinion. Conferences were held and
359
further sacrifices to satisfy the grievances of the medical profes
sion. To gauge the real importance of these concessions we must
call attention to another aspect of the Insurance Bill, of fundamen
tal importance.
It set
up a small body of Insurance Commissioners furnished
with very wide powers at once administrative, judicial, and legis
lative or, if you prefer, quasi-legislative. They were made respon
sible for the administration of the kw, empowered to define its
meaning by administrative regulations which in very many
instances must be regarded as supplementary laws and judging,
in most cases without appeal, infractions of the law. In strict logic
the new service of sickness insurance should have been given to
the local Government Board, but Lloyd George no doubt wished
it to be an
independent branch of administration in order to with
draw it from the influence, in his opinion sterilizing, of John
Burns.1 On November 28 the list of the first Commissioners was
read in die House of Commons. At its head was Sir Robert
Morant, who, driven from the Board of Education by a revolt of
the elementary school teachers, exchanged one important adminis
trative position for another. Subject to the Commissioners, the
Bill set up Insurance Committees in every country and county
borough. In the original form of the Bill as introduced in May
they were called County Health Councils. Only a quarter of their
members were appointed by the Government. The remaining
three-quarters were to be elected, a third by the Count} Councils
or County Borough Councils, a third by the "approved societies
and a third by the Post Office Insurers, and in the original draft
had been to do for those who paid their con
their sole function
what the approved societies did for
tributions into the Post Office
the vast majority. But even then the Bill betrayed a tendency to
extend their functions, With the assent of the friendly societies,
they might take over the administration of medical assistance.
This became compulsory in the remodelled text finally passed in
November. The approved societies were to distribute die sickness
allowance, the maternity benefit, and the disablement benefit, but
amendments tabled, some of which were carried. But ultimately there were embodied in
me Bill, which was passed into an Act of Parliament, provisions which gave railway
companies and other employers, as well as capitalistic insurance companies (whether qf
the "Friendly" type or otherwise) power to set up a society/ (G. W. Alcock,
Fifty Years
ofRailway Trade Unionism, p. 419.)
1 Sir Almeric March 23, 1917
fitzroy, (Memoirs, vol. ii, p. 646).
360
the entire administration of the medical benefit was entrusted to
Committees, who
these administrative bodies, the local Insurance
were to draw up panels of doctors amongst whom the insured
might choose. The composition of these committees was also
modified. Only a fifth would be elected by the County Councils.
Others would be nominated by the Insurance Commissioners,
others appointed to represent the insured, and others elected by
the medical corporation. And the Insurance Committees were
empowered, in conjunction with the central Commissioners, if

in their opinion the public health was being endangered by the
insanitary condition of dwellings, by a tainted water supply, or

failure to applythe provisions of the Factory7 Acts, to
strictly
exact a species of fine from the local authorities, to covei the
exceptional expenditure which these agents of national insurance

were thereiore obliged to incur. 1
The history of British institutions had witnessed a singular
reversal of outlook. Formerly the English had prided themselves
on having created the representative system to control the agents
of the executive and restrict their action. They were now setting
up a new bureaucracy ro control their representative assemblies
and compel them to act.
The National Insurance Bill passed its third reading in the

Commons on December an amendment delaying its
6, after
operation brought forward by the Opposition had been rejected

by 320 to 223 votes. In the House of Lords it passed its second
reading without a debate, after a speech by Lord Lansdowne, on
December 1 1. The House of Commons having accepted a further
number of small technical amendments introduced by the Lords,
2
the Bill received the royal assent on December i6. The House of
Lords, in fact, was employing the tactics it had adopted in 1906,
not to oppose a popular measure of social reform. But why in
that case had it taken the bold step in 1909 of throwing out Lloyd
George s Budget? It had provoked a crisis which had lasted for

two years, had thrown the public finances into disorder, and had
1
i & 2, Geo. 5, Cap. 55, Sec. 63.
s i
& 2 Geo. 5, Cap. 55
: An Act no
provide for Insurance against Loss of Health and for
the Prevention and Core of Sickness and for Insurance against Unemployment and for
purposes incidental thereto (National Insurance Art, 1911).
361
brought the political life of the country to a standstill to no pur
pose, and the final result had been that the country had made the
peerage realize its weakness without even the compliment of
hatred. The Budget for the current financial year was also hurried
through without debate several months late. And on the very day,
December 16, when the Budget, the Insurance Bill and several
other measures jointly received the royal assent, Parliament was
at last prorogued. After all the noisy agitation a feeling of weari
ness was felt throughout the country. But at first sight it did not
seem likely to damage the position of the Cabinet. The ministry
had emerged from the crisis victorious. Asquith had defeated the
House of Lords. And Lloyd George had accomplished the feat of
carrying in a single session a measure so bold and so complicated.
When he introduced the Bill on May 6 he was recovering from a
disease of the throat which had kept him away from Parliament for
several months and he had asked the indulgence of his audience
should his strength fail him while he was speaking. But it did not
failhim either that day or during the following months. Six days
every week until the winter he worked fifteen or sixteen hours a
day, hours occupied by conferences with the experts of the Treas
ury or the Board of Trade, or with representatives of the various
classes of persons affected by the Bill
1
the doctors, the friendly

societies, the trade unions. Even his hours of rest were not wasted.
Luncheons and dinners could be employed for useful interviews.
When in September he took a semblance of holiday in his native
Wales, at Criccieth, he took his expert advisers with him. Add to
this excessive pressure of work the fatigue of
parliamentary
sittings and the important speeches delivered from time to time
at a public meeting. 1 When as Christmas approached, it was
certain that he had gained the victory, even his enemies
paid
tribute to his genius. Never had he appeared so great.
Thanks to Lloyd George even more than to Asquith the Liberal

party was victorious. And its victory was first and foremost a
victory over the new Labour party whose rapid growth had
1
Speech at Birmingham, June 10; at WhitefiekTs Tabernacle in London, October 14;
at Bath, November 26.
362
alarmed many Liberals few years earlier. Two causes about this
a
date, 1910, contributed to its
temporary eclipse.
The first, with which Lloyd George had nothing to do, was a
decision of the courts. The employers, elated by thek victory in
the Lords in 1900 the Taff Vale decision lost no time in launch
ing a further attack. For they saw the workers preparing
to take
thek revenge by using the Committee for Labour Representation
to form at Westminster a class party closely dependent on the
unions. Was this tolerable? Was it indeed lawful? Were not the
unions exceeding the competence prescribed by thcit technical
objects when they raised by
a compulsory levy from their mem
bers subscriptions the funds necessary to support a political party?
As early as the beginning of 1906, even before the new Labour
the Trade Disputes Bifl, a miner
party had secured the passing of
in South Wales called Steele, with the financial support of the
local Conservatives, brought an action against his union for
making the levy without his consent. Meanwhile, the Trade
the Labour members
Disputes Bill was debated in the House and
believed that owing to thek efforts the measure had been so
worded But the lawyers who worked
as to bar Steele s action.
for the Cabinet took care that reservations should be inserted into
the clause intended to make such actions impossible, which
1
Steele s action was allowed.
actually gave it the opposite effect.
2
It is true he lost his case. The statutes of his union provided for
the levy of which he complained and the union had therefore the
right to make it. But very shortly
another rebel came forward,
3
Osborne, a member of the railwaymen s union. In view of
Steele s defeat the court in which he first brought his action non
suited him. He appealed against the decision.
In November 1908
1 Clause
4 (i) laid down: An action against a trade union, whether
of workmen or
masters or against any members or officials thereof on behalf of themselves and all other
members of the trade union in respect of any tortious act alleged to have been, committed
court.* But Clause 4 (z)
by or on behalf of the trade union, shall not be entertained by any
went on to add: Nothing in this section shall offset the liability of the trustees of a trade
union to be sued in the events provided for by the Trade Union Act, 1871, Sec. 9 except
or
in respect of any tortious act committed by or on behalf of the union in contemplation
in furtherance of a trade dispute/
2
Steele v. South Wales Miners* Federation King s Bench Division, January 12, 1907.
A previous decision against Steele had been given by the Cardiff County Court on March
*
*
Liberally financed from capitalist sources (S.
and B. Webb, History of Trade Utoomsm
Revised Edition 1920, p. 608). See. however on this point Osbome s categorical denial
(Morning Post, October 8, 1910 also My
Case pp. 23, 28). Cf. G. S. Akock, Fifty Years
of Railway Trade Unionism, 1922, pp. 338-40-
363
the judges of the Appeal Court unanimously reversed the decision
of the inferior court. It was the turn of the union to appeal to the
House of Lords. On December 21, 1909, five judges (among
them a declared Radical, Lord Shaw) decided unanimously in
Osborne s favour. 1
They all agreed in pronouncing that the trade unions were
entitled to the special privileges conferred by the Act
only in so
far as they did not
overstep the functions attributed to them by
the Acts of 1871 and 1875 and that the constitution of a political
party was not among these. Two of the judges further argued
that the formation of a political body ruled
by the trade unions
was opposed to the spirit of the British Constitution and subverted
the foundations of representative government. It was in vain that
the onions attempted by all kinds of shifts to elude the force of
this decision; the law had the last word. Therefore, to
defray the
cost of
dectioneering campaigns and provide a salary for the
members it returned, the party was obliged to depend on volun
tary subscriptions which produced a most inadequate revenue.
Under these ckonnstances until the day when a ministerialist
majority would consent to a Statute restoring die right of which
the Osbome judgment had
deprived them, they were financially
dependent upon the Liberal party.
Nor was this the sole cause of the Labour party s weakness.
Another and more potent cause was the active
policy of social
reform pursued since 1908 by the two Radical leaders, Winston
Churchill and Lloyd George. The Trade
Disputes Bill of 1906 had
been passed undo: the direct
pressure of the unions. But this was
not the case with the legislation which followed it. With the
pos
sible exception of the Old
Age Pensions Bffi it was the work of
energetic statesmen Churchill first, then Lloyd George whose
policy it was to anticipate the demands of the working class. How
unenterprising and timid in comparison seemed those Labour
1 Gsborne v. Tbc Amalgamarrd Society of
Railway Servants of England, Ireland, and
Wales, Chancery DivisioiLjuly 2,1, 1908 Supreme Court ofJudicature. Court of
Appeal
November 16, 1908 Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants v. Osbome, House of
Lords, December ai, 1909 Walter Odxsrne (of the O&ome
Judgement) My Case. The
Cmix and^jedts Osbome Judgement, 1910 W. V. Osbome (of the Osbome
<?/&*
Judge
ment:) Sane Trade Umomsm (1913). This last brochure prints ai an
appendix the five opin
ions of me judges in me House of Lords M.
Beer, Gesdiuhte des Sozialismas in En^md,
1913, pp- 4*9 sqq. S. and B. Webb, Tfe Mstory of TrfeL%uwin. Revised Ed.
19^0 pp
608 sqq. (an extremely
A thorough and exhaustive criticism of the judeementV
Sutt Msfcry tfthe British
G D H.
Cofc, Class Movement
Working H89-1927,
55 sqft. (HcsrnmnaTHrs and follows dosely S. andB.
Webb).
364
members who were the typical parliamentary representatives of
British trade Henderson, Bowennan, Shackleton,
unionism.
Hodge, and Abraham ! Not one of them had the imagination to

pursue a policy so bold
and so fitr-reaching in its scope and not
one no doubt who would not have been alarmed had he been
told that in the near future he must shoulder the responsibility of
office. Their party lacked prestige at a moment
when Lloyd
party. Between
was the of the liberal die
George raising prestige
representatives
of Labour and Lloyd George there was all the
is between
sleep and wakefelness or,
difference that there if you
prefer,
between health and fever.
The Government majority had emerged from the Election of
the Labour members and the Irish
January 1910 greatly reduced;
constituted its mainstay. We should therefore be inclined at first
to wonder why the Labour members did not profit by this state
of things to increase their influence in Parliament. The foregoing
considerations explain why, on the contrary, their power declined.
At the January Election unlike the Irish they lost a number of
seats. Before the dissolution there were 44 Labour members,
in the new Parliament only 40. in only twenty-six of the
in which Labour put forward a can
seventy-eight constituencies
didate, did he oppose a Liberal and in not one
of these was he
returned. On the morrow of the Election Ramsay MacDonald
1
stated plainly his desire for a coalition with the liberals. The
party dared not adopt this policy

and chose the policy of inde
the veteran Keir Hardie. But when the
pendence advocated by
new members had to choose their places at Westminster it be
came obvious how unreal this independence was. In 1906 the
Irish and Labour members had taken their seats on the Opposition
side of the House. Indeed, they had had little choice in the matter;
the Government benches were so crowded. But now when they
could choose freely, the Irish remained on the Opposition ben
ches, whereas the Labour members preferred
to sit on the Speaker s
right.
In the December Election Labour did indeed win two seats
from the Liberals. But this was a pure accident. Never had the
alliance between Labour and the liberals been so dose, and at no
previous Election had the Labour party dispkyed so Etde activity.
1 Interview vtiih Ramsay MacDonald, Christum ContmonweaSA^ February 2, 1910. See

8 when he a special conference
also Keir Hardie reply at Newport on February
s opened
of die Labour party, summoned
to discnss die Osborne decision.
365
In they put forward no more than 58 candidates, and of
all
these only 1 1 opposed a Liberal. It might well seem as though

the hopes of those who at the opening of the century had
dreamed of forming an independent party had been disappointed
and the Labour party had resigned itself to being no more than a
professional group dependent upon the Liberals.
Lloyd George had also triumphed over the Unionist party. It

was his great Budget of 1909 which had provoked the crisis and
the combination, heterogeneous as it was, of moderate and radical
^Liberals, Labour members, and Irish Nationalists which had sup
ported him, had proved sufficiently solid to survive the test of two
successive Elections. There was therefore no need to have recourse
to tariff reform, to widen the basis of taxation it was sufficient
,
to apply the principles of the neo-Gladstoman Budgets, to defray,

without imposing or increasing tariffs, both the growing burden
of naval expenditure for which Lloyd George blamed the
Unionists and of the Social services whose cost he expected to
increase still further. And the proof of his victory was the dissen
sion which prevailed among the Unionists.
For the uncompromising tariff reformers blamed Balfbur for
the Unionist defeat. In January 1910, under the banner of Tariff
Reform they had very considerably reduced the Liberal majority,
in fact, in England itself had transformed it into a minority. Their
success shouldhave been pushed further. But Balfour had pre
ferred inDecember to relegate tariff reform to the background
and concentrate on the question of Home Rule. What had he
gained by this policy? In Yorkshire he had still further decreased
the Unionist minorities. In Lancashire he had not gained so many
as ten seats. Taking the country as a whole the result had been the
status quo, and the House of Lords had suffered a decisive and
humiliating defeat. The outcry became so violent that on Novem
ber 8, 1911, Balfour resigned the leadership of the party. Who
would take his place? Should it be Austen Chamberlain or
Walter Long, the representative of the Balfourian tradition? To
avoid the spectacle of a disputed election both candidates agreed
to retire in favour of Bonar Law, a new man, little known to the
366
general public, a Canadian by and the son of a Presbyterian

birth
minister, who had made a fortune in the steel manufacture at
Glasgow before he went into politics and had taken an active part
in the propaganda for tariff reform. That a man of such antece
dents could be unanimously chosen only nine years after Lord
Salisbury s retirement to be the leader of the Conservative party
is a
proof, perhaps as significant in its way as the defeat of the
House of Lords, of the speed with which British public life was
becoming democratic. His difficulties began immediately. Should
he ask for the taxation of foodstuffs? Should the composition of
the British Budget be made subject to the decisions of an Imperial
Conference? Was he bound by the pledge Balfour had given
before the Election of December 1910 not to impose a protective
tariff without a previous referendum? He could not answer any
of these questions without offending either the stalwart disciples
of Chamberlain who constituted the fighting wing of the party
or those who would have nothing to do with a policy of dear
bread and who represented from 60 to 70 per cent of the Unionist
electorate. Now that he had become leader of the party, Bonar
Law found himself obliged to be as cautious and hesitating on this
point as Balfour had been and therefore equally incapable of
arousing the enthusiasm of the masses. When he launched the
programme of tariff reform a great statesman had attached a heavy
weight to the neck of his party which it must bear for many a
long day.
Hampered though they were by their official programme the
Unionist party, despite their double defeat at the polls in 1910
and the apathy the electorate had displayed while the House of
Lords was battling for its rights, were not without grounds for
hope. The Irish Nationalists, arbiters of Parliament, would de
mand from the Cabinet their payment for two years faithful
support, the grant of Home Rule. It would therefore not be long

before the Irish question would involve the Government in diffi
culties far more serious than those in which the question of tariff
reform had placed the Opposition. Moreover, the subservience
of the Labour party to the Liberals was arousing a lively discontent
among the working class, which was openly displayed at the end
of the year in their denunciations of the machinery set up by the
Insurance Bill, The Unionist agents were preparing to turn this
discontent to their advantage. And there was another question
VOL, VI 14 367
which ever since 1906 the Unionists had exploited against the
Liberals, still suspect of an attachment, unwarranted by the situa
tion, to the traditions of Gladstonian pacifism the German peril.
The tension between England and Germany had never been
greater than at the opening of the year in which Lloyd George
carried his great Budget. A semblance of calm had followed until
in the summer of 1911 a serious diplomatic incident to which the
name of Agadir has remained attached displayed the two countries
on the brink of war. We must therefore turn from our study of
English domestic politics, to the history of her foreign policy
during these three years, so disturbed in both spheres. More than
once we meet on our way the two great demagogues, the
shall
two of the populace, Churchill and Lloyd George. In
leaders
1908 and 1909 both had been champions of peace at any price,
though continuing nevertheless to make the inevitable conces
sions to the military party. In 1911both went over to the war
party, Churchill permanently, Lloyd George on a particular
occasion, though his temporary change of front was equally sig
nificant. It was Lloyd George whom we shall see at the moment
of crisis amazing England and Europe by employing in public
against Germany the language of the most bellicose patriotism.
This redoubtable figure was the hero of the hour. Thrusting his
rivals into the background, he held the stage of his time and
country.
368
CHAPTER m
From the Bosnian Crisis to the Crisis
of Agadir
I THE AUSTRIAN ANNEXATION OF BOSNIA AND

THE NAVAL SCARE OF 1909
passing of the new German law which

hastened the
which old should be replaced and ordered
THE speed at vessels
four large ironclads to be laid down every year until 1914
alarmed the British Government. And irs alarm was the greater
because the Reichstag had passed the new law amid scenes of
enthusiasm, by an overwhelming majority and without debate.
In 1900 the Government had with the utmost difficulty extorted
the Reichstag s consent to its new programme of naval construc
tion. Now on the contrary the party leaders had, it would seem,
taken the initiative and forced the government departments to act.
Have I said that the new naval law alarmed the British Govern
ment? It would perhaps be truer to say perplexed. For it left the
Government embarrassed by the very success of that policy of
ententes inaugurated in 1904 and persistently developed ever since.
What in fact had the British Government in view when it em
barked on policy? Negatively, the Foreign Office sought to
this
deter the German Government from its attempts to surround
Britain with a cordon of hostile powers by proving how easily
Britain could win over all those allies Germany hoped to array
against her. But for the complete success of the policy, something
more was necessary. must achieve the positive result of awaken
It
ing Germany to the dangers to which she was exposed in virtue

of her Continental position, and making her pay more attention
to her army and less to her navy, so that her statesmen would
return to the principles which had governed German policy in
the age of Bismarck, when exclusively occupied with Continental
policy, Germany had abandoned

to Great Britain, without a
struggle, the empire of the seas. No such change of front was

visible at present in Berlin. The German army estimates showed
only a moderate increase. The naval estimates on the contrary rose
369
FROM BOSNIA TO AGADIR
by and bounds and during the first year in which the re
leaps
modelled Liberal Cabinet was in office, the tension between the
two navies and the two countries became greater than it had yet
been.
In that remodelled Cabinet, indeed, the imperialists would seem
to have gained ground at the expense of their opponents, since
Asquith became Premier instead of Campbell-Bannerman and

McKenna succeeded Lord Tweedmouth at the Admiralty with
the avowed intention of speeding up naval construction. The
spring and summer witnessed, in fact, a round of those visits from
one ruler to another which had taken their place amongst the
most important ceremonial of European diplomacy and could
justly be claimed as a succession of triumphs, accessions of prestige,
for the Foreign Office. In May, President Fallieres came to London
to be welcomed by the cheers of an enormous crowd. The pretext
was the Franco-British exhibition opened a few days
for his visit
before and destined for the whole year to cement the new alliance
between the two cultures. During the official speeches the English
King spoke of a permanent entente \ the French President of *a
closer entente ? between the two countries. More sensational was
the King s visit next month to the Czar. It was the first time in
history that a British sovereign had visited Russia. The two
monarchs met on June 5 offReval. The Czar recalled the agree
ment concluded the previous year between the two Govern
ments, by which questions equally important for both nations had
been settled. The King mentioned other questions which might
in future be settled by the same methods. What were they?
Clearly the reforms which must be imposed upon the Sultan to

secure the better government of Macedonia. And it would seem
that the conversations between Sir Charles Hardinge who accom
panied the King and the Russian Foreign Minister, Isvolsky, did
in fact achieve the feat of an Anglo-Russian agreement about the
Balkans. Had not Sir Edward Grey during the negotiations which
prepared the Anglo-Russian agreement of 1907 expressly de
clared his desire for such an understanding? From that meeting at
Reval followed in August by a visit of President Fallieres to
Petersburg dates the expression Triple Entente1 to denote the
1
National Review, June 1908, vol. li, pp. 505-6: *So far ... there has been something
wanting to complete and perfect the entente cordiale. So far as France s Russian ally and her
British friend regard one another with suspicion . so long was the diplomatic position
. ,
of all three Powers seriously complicated. And the anonymous writer of the article con-
370
AUSTRIAN ANNEXATION OF BOSNIA
network of understandings between
England and France, and
England and Russia which, in the language of The Times, without
being alliances may readily become the parents of alliances, should
1
unjustifiable aggression by others ever render alliances necessary .
Germany took alarm, and its extent was measured by the fall in
the value of Government bonds on the Berlin Stock
Exchange.
And her fears were increased
when on August 10, King Edward
visited the
Emperor of Austria at Ischl, after stopping en route at
Cronberg just long enough for a short interview with William II.
Whatever the real subject of the conversations between Edward
VII and Francis Joseph may have been, it is not surprising that
this visit, the paid by the English King to the Emperor of
first
Austria, should have been interpreted by German

opinion as the
expression of a policy which aimed at breaking up the Triple
Alliance after
constructing the Triple Entente. But at this moment
events occurred in eastern
Europe they had indeed already be
gun before the meeting at Ischl which alarmed all the Foreign
Offices, seemed be bringing Europe to the brink of
at times to
war, and which after a of rapid vicissitudes

series
finally enabled
the German Government to achieve a striking diplomatic
victory,
and display to the entire world a strong
Triple Alliance arrayed
against a weak and disunited Triple Entente.
The first of these events was the Young-Turk revolution which

broke out at
Constantinople on July 23 after an insurrection
which lasted three weeks. It was a military revolt led by a revolu
tionary committee whose headquarters were at Salonika. It was
a movement whose causes were
deep seated, so deep seated that
they escaped the notice of superficial observers and the revolution
took all the
governments by surprise beginning with the diplo
matic representatives of the Great Powers at
Constantinople. But
the occasion of the revolution, the incident which made it break
timies under the heading A Triple Entente*. "There is
absolutely no reason whatsoever
why Great Britain and Russia should not form as firm and faithful a
friendship as Great
Britain and France; and it is the duty of every patriotic Englishman to
co-operate to that
end. Once more King Edward has given the lead/ See also
J. Ellis Barker The Triple
Entente and the Triple Alliance (Nineteenth Century, vol. Ixiv,
pp. I, sqq. July 1908);
Ellis Barker
throughout the article speaks of The Triple Entente*.
1
The Times, June n, 1908.
371
out at this precise date, July 1908, was. undoubtedly the Reval
meeting.
Let us recall the antecedents of that interview. Peace had been
maintained in the East for ten years on the basis of a close under
standing between Austria and Russia. Russia regarded the con
cession by the Porte in January 1908 of the Sandjak railway to the
Austrian Prime Minister, Baron Aehrenthal, as a breach of this
understanding. It was no doubt arguable that when she requested
and obtained the concession Austria did not exceed her rights
under the treaty of Berlin, but it was impossible to deny that at
least it violated the spirit of the agreement between Austria and
Russia. For Baron Von AehrenthaTs political aims were only too
plain. By the construction of this railway,

the Sandjak, a wedge of
territory driven between Serbia and Montenegro, would become

an Austrian zone of influence. Sooner or later the railway would
be prolonged to Salonika and the old pan-German dream realized;
Salonika would become a great German or Austro-German port.
In Russia pan-Slavist opinion took alarm. Isvolsky, the architect
of the agreement with England, sought to strengthen it by joint
action of the two powers to force a system of reforms upon the
Sultan. England by the mouth of Sir Edward Grey, demanded
the setting up of a system of administrative autonomy in the
Balkans under a governor chosen by an agreement between the
Sultan and the Powers. Everyone believed and not without justi
fication that at Reval Russia accepted the British proposal, pos
sibly in return for certain concessions. What resource was left to

the Turkish patriots? Could they count on Abdul Hamid to resist
this first step towards the dismemberment of his empire? He was
too weak and too corrupt. The malcontents rebelled, putting for
ward a programme at once democratic and patriotic. Compelling
the Sultan to restore the constitution of 1876 they undertook the
task of setting up in Turkey a system in which the Government
was in the hands of a Chamber elected by the universal suffrage,
not of all the Moslems alone, but of all the inhabitants of Turkey
without distinction of race, language or creed. There would be
no longer any reason to demand reforms, measures foj: protecting
and faiths oppressed by the Turk. For there would no
nationalities
longer be oppressors and oppressed but fellow citizens on a foot

ing of complete equality.
The immediate effect of this sensational revolution was
372
extremely favourable to England. Abdul Hamid s entire govern

ment had been in the pay of Germany. Within twenty-four hours
all hispro-German counsellors were in prison and the German
Ambassador, Baron Marschall, accustomed hitherto to use the
language of a master, found himself beleaguered in his embassy
by the hatred of the entire population. England, on the contrary,
reaped an unexpected reward for the unpopularity she had incurred
for so many years with the Sultan s Government by demanding
a policy of reform. A
new Ambassador, Sir Gerald Lowther,
reached Constantinople on the very morrow of the revolution.
He was embarrassed by the unrestrained enthusiasm with
which he was greeted. Noel Buxton, the President of the Balkan
Committee in London, and the unwearied champion of the
peoples oppressed by the Turks, was equally disconcerted to find
himself become overnight a Turkish national hero. Conservative
and cautious Englishmen, not least the Ambassador himself, re
mained pessimistic and sceptical. How solid was the new system?
And in any case what effect would the revolution produce in
Egypt and India? But British opinion as a whole gave its confi
dence to the Young Turks and carried with it Sir Edward Grey,
who thought that after all the best way to conciliate the Moslems
of Egypt and India was to display openly and even advertise his
sympathy with the experiment in reform on which the Moslems
of Constantinople had embarked. Marschall consoled himself by
reflecting that this new-born sympathy of the Turks
for England
was a natural phenomenon, one of the infantile diseases of a
nation adopting for the first time a Liberal constitution. Germany
herself had suffered from the same malady before Bismarck cured
her. 1
Then a second, event followed, a reply to the Young-Turk
revolution, as that had been a reply to the meeting at Reval. On
October 5 the Prince of Bulgaria declared himself the independent
sovereign of Bulgaria and not only of Bulgaria in the strict sense,
whose boundaries had been laid down by the Treaty of Berlin,

but also of eastern Roumelia which after 1885 had remained
nominally a Turkish province though the Prince of Bulgaria
was
its
governor. And on October 7 the Austrian Government pro
claimed the annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina over which it
1 Baron von Marschall to Prince von Billow, September 4, 1908 (Die Grosse Politik . . .
vol. xxvu pp.

, 622-3).
373
had exercised a protectorate since 1878. Though in either case no
real change was effected and a status which had long existed in
fact received the seal of official recognition, both acts involved a
serious blow to the prestige of the new regime in Turkey, which
Germany was reasonably suspected of having encouraged, if not

actually engineered. The without distinction
entire British Press
of political allegiance expressed indignation and protested against
this violation of international law. And naturally the indignation
was still keener in Russia, which saw the pohcy of Miirzsteg
violated more flagrantly, far more flagrantly than it had been in
January by the Sandjak concession, since it was the treaty of

Berlin which Austria was openly breaking. In Italy also,
itself
great indignation was felt and demonstrations

hostile to Austria
took place. An Austrian encroachment on the Adriatic coast was
regarded of Italy s rights. And when that encroach
as a violation
ment was effected without any previous understanding with a
Power that was, or was supposed to be, Austria s ally, it must be
regarded as a breach of the Triple Alliance. Was the Triple
Entente not only to be knit closer but enlarged by the accession
of Turkey and Italy? The event would prove far otherwise.
What did Russia claim? Compensation not for Turkey but for
herself, particularly a free passage through the Dardanelles for her
navy? What did England claim? Nothing for herself but compen
sation for Turkey whose honour had been seriously damaged.
There was therefore no agreement between the policies of the
two Powers, though both were indignant with Austria. It is true
no doubt, that in 1907 Sir Edward Grey had informed the Russian
Ambassador that the Foreign Office was no longer opposed in
principle to the opening of the Dardanelles to Russian men-of-
war. But the declaration had been confidential and by mutual
consent the question of the Straits had been omitted both from
the text of the agreement concluded in September 1907 and from
the conversations at Reval in June 1908. Isvol$ky however had
not forgotten a declaration so invaluable for Russian foreign
policy. Disclosures made by Baron Von Aehrenthal soon revealed
that on the very morrow of Reval Isvolsky had approached him,
374
and attempted to restore the Balkan entente between Austria and
Russia on the following basis. Austria was to have full sovereignty
over Bosnia and Herzegovina, Russia a free passage through the
Dardanelles. 1 In Isvolsky s eyes Von Aehrenthal s crime was not
the annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina but that he had effected
so quickly that he had not had time to secure his
part of the
it
agreement. He was caught in the trap, compelled to admit that

he had no objection to the annexation, and to beg from England
the free passage of the Straits. But Sir Edward was himself Grey
trapped, not daring either to refuse Russia what he had promised
a year before to let her take, or to
compel Young-Turkey to
it.
grant
We must add that Russia, which had no wish to abandon Bul
garia to the influence of Vienna,was quite willing to recognize
her independence, even with the addition of Eastern Roumelia
and to negotiate a direct agreement on the question between
Ferdinand and the Porte. This, too, was unwelcome to England.
But the Foreign Office had no desire to admit to the whole world
that the policy of an understanding with Russia had broken down
a year after the agreement, and three months after Reval. At
Petersburg Sir Arthur Nicolson, without conceding .to him what it
was not in his power to concede, did his utmost to support Isvolsky
against a hostile cabal. When in October Isvolsky visited London
he had a splendid reception and Sir Edward Grey sought to find
a formula by which he could make common cause with him
against Von Aehrenthal. It would not be a revision of the Treaty

of Berlin. This would have aroused too powerful appetites in
Russia, too great alarm in England. It would be an unpretending
conference of ambassadors which would sanction the double
breach of the treaty by Bulgaria and by Austria, but would at the
same time determine what recompense should be made to the
Powers whose prestige or economic interests had suffered, Turkey
and even Serbia.
This was little in comparison with Russia s desire. But it was
too much for Austria and the Austrian Government soon per
ceived how strong a position it occupied. must not imagine, We
1
See a private from the Baron Von Aehrenthal to Prince von Billow, September
letter
26, 1908 : *He me that he had not entered into any agreement with
(Isvolsky) assured
England on the question of the Straits. In showing myself ready to satisfy Russia s wishes
on the point, I was influenced by the wider aim of detaching her from England (Oster-
reich-Ungarns Aussenpolitik . . . vol. i, pp. 99 sqq.).
375
as at the all the capitals of
time Petersburg and Europe believed,
that theEmperor was behind the annexation of Bosnia.
"William
He was informed of Austria s decision only at the same time as

the other Powers and in fact, owing to a mistake, not until twenty-
four hours after the French President. At the moment he was
extremely vexed by a step which bid fair to embroil him irre
trievably with the Turks, and annoyed that Austria had failed to
observe the decencies of behaviour between allies by consulting
him first. And the German Press at first displayed annoyance.
But Chancellor von Biilow, who was a more tircumspect states
man and had moreover been informed in advance by the Austrian
Government, decided to give Austria unreserved support and
soon converted the Emperor and public opinion to his point of
view. The struggle, therefore, quickly became a battle between
Aehrenthal supported by the Emperor William and Isvolsky
supported, though not without inevitable reservations, by Sir
Edward Grey or, as they said in Vienna, by King Edward. For the
King, if we may credit the gossip of court circles, was furious.
Nothing had been said to him of the matter at Ischl. He had not
been allowed to play on his return to England that part of Euro
1
pean inquiry agent which he prided himself on filling so well.
The legend of King Edward s policy made it easy to ascribe to his
dkect influence both the anti-Austrian attitude of the Foreign
Office and the violent campaign in the British Press
against the
annexation of Bosnia. To the latter the Austrian Press replied with
equal violence, and a coolness ensued between the two monarchs
which lasted for months. 2 Before leaving Vienna in November
for the embassy at Berlin, the
English Ambassador, Sir Edward
Goschen, received nothing short of a rating from the Austrian
Prime Minister. 3 Such insolence would be inexplicable, if Aehren
thal had not already felt certain of victory.
Littleby little the Young-Turk Government drew closer to the
1
For the false reports which an Austrian journalist circulated in the German Press in
August 1909 on the subject of Edward VITs attitude at Ischl, intended to excite German
opinion against him, see MensdorfTs telegram from London, August 2, 1909, his report
from London, August 19, 1909 and his private letters from London, November 12, 17,
1909 (Osterreich-Ungams Aussenpolitik vol. ii, pp. 424-448 and 531, 545). That summer,
. . .
King Edward attempted in vain to secure an invitation from the Emperor of Austria.
2
Von Tschirschky to Prince von Biilow, December 16, 1908 (Die Grosse Politik . . vol.
.
xxvi, p. 340). MensdorfT Despatch from London, November 3, 1908 (Osterretch-Ungams

Aussenpolitik . . . vol. i, p. 372).
8
Sir Edward Goschen to Sir Edward
Grey, November 5, 1908 (British Documents . . .
vol. v, pp. 484-5). Wickham Steed,

Through Thirty Years, vol. i, p. 293.
376
Teutonic powers. The integrity of the Ottoman Empire had less
to fear from them. Russia and England were still the enemy. At
the beginning of October Marschall watched with amusement
Sir Gerald Lowther silent, depressed, and
extremely embarrassed
to know how to repay the enthusiasm shown for him.1 After all,
*
Turkey could accept the loss of these two provinces, akeady three-
quarters lost for the past forty years, the more easily because Austria
had offered from the very first to renounce in return the rights
over the Sandjak given her by the Treaty of Berlin. Was it not
indeed the necessity of evacuating the Sandjak which decided
Aehrenthal to give some compensation to the amour-propre of the
military party by annexing the two provinces? Let Austria guar
antee the Moslems of Bosnia and Herzegovina their possessions
and religious liberty, pay the Turkish Government an indemnity
to compensate her for the state lands Turkey had
possessed in the
annexed provinces, and promise to conclude a favourable com
mercial treaty and abolish the capitulations. On these terms
Turkey, the power principally concerned, would undoubtedly be
willing to separate herself from the other powers nd recognize
the annexation without waiting for the meeting of the Congress
or Conference. She actually took this step on February 26, 1909.
It was all
very well for the British Press to dwell on the importance
of the concessions made by Austria and explain them by the
anxiety ofVienna to put an end to the Turkish boycott of Austrian
goods. This was untrue, or at least only partially true. The truth
was that at Constantinople Austrian or Austro-German diplomacy
was once more gaining the advantage over British.
At the very moment when it secured this triumph in the

Levant, Teutonic policy gained an equally decisive victory in
Paris. At first the Young-Turk revolution had favoured French
influence at Constantinople as much as British. The Salonika
revolutionaries had served their political apprenticeship in Paris,
French was more familiar to them than English, and their philo
sophy was the offspring of French democracy rather dun of
1
Baroa von Marschall to the Minister for Foreign Affairs, October u, 1908 (Die Grosse
Politik . .
1
. voL xxvi ,
p. 152).
377
English. Liberalism. But if the French Ambassador at Constanti
to make good
nople, Constans, a former Prime Minister, prepared
use of their friendly feelings, his manner of doing so was not
entirely satisfactory to his British colleague.
He pursued a policy
of financial co-operation between France and Germany which ill *
sorted with the policy of the Franco-Russian alliance and the

Franco-British entente and he expressed himself on the subject
with a frankness anything but diplomatic. The new English
Ambassador who came from Morocco, where for several years
he had worked zealously to defend French interests against the
claims of Germany, was disconcerted by the novel situation in
which he found himself on the Dardanelles and expressed the
wish to be rid of the Frenchman 1 But he was not rid of him, and
.
policy which found favour for the moment

it was Constans with
the French Government. During the months which followed
the last months of Clemenceau s ministry French policy was
more pro-Austrian and pro-German than at any other time
during the years which led up to the War.
France deliberately adopted an attitude of conciliation. She
declared her conviction that the best way to prevent the Bosnian
crisis leading to war was
to satisfy, as far as possible, the claims of
Austria. Possibly the French Ambassador in Vienna when he
advised this policy cherished the hope of detaching Austria from
Germany, and there can be no doubt that this was the unavowed
purpose of the new British Ambassador in Vienna, Sir Fairfax
Cartwright, who would have been sent to Berlin instead of to
Vienna, if Berlin had not refused to accept a man whose hatred
of Germany was so well known. But the intention of the Quai
d Orsay in making this attempt to adapt its policy as far as possible
to Austrian interests, was different. Beyond a rapprochement with
Austria it had a rapprochement with Germany in view. 2
1 Sir Gerald Lowther to Sir Edward Grey, August It will be interesting to

u, 1908. . . .
see how the German Ambassador is treated on his return. All his friends are now locked up
and his position will be difficult. I wish there were a possibility of getting rid of the French
man/ (British Documents . . . vol. v, p. 265.)
2
For this rapprochement between France and Germany in the Near East and the part
played in it by the journalist, Andre* Tardieu, and the minister, Pichon, see the note from
Stemrich to von Billow, September 29, 1908 (Die Grosse Politik vol. xxiv, p. 333).
. . .
Baron von der Lancken to Prince von Btilow, December 19, 1908 (Die Grosse Politik . . .
pp. 372-4). Von Schdn to Prince vonBiilow, October 10, 1908 (Die Grosse Politik . vol. . .
xxvi, p. 145). A rumour, derived from a reliable source, was current in Vienna that
Clemenceau himself at this moment had taken alarm at the prospect of finding himself
involved, as a result of the policy favoured by Britain, in a war with Germany. (Private
378
During the forty years which followed the war of 1870 France
pursued, if we neglect inevitable deviations, a fairly consistent
policy. Squeezed between two powers of the first rank, England
and Germany, she endeavoured to build up a colonial empire by
the alternative favour of both. It was a difficult and a risky game
to play but proved in the long run successful almost everywhere
except in the Nile valley. In 1904 France had obtained from

England a free hand in Morocco. At Tangier and Algeciras Ger
many had reminded her that this was not enough. French diplo
macy was now trying to persuade Germany to acquiesce in, if
not positively to favour, the extension of her influence in that
country. On the spot where French and Germans were at logger
heads the difficulties were very great. But at Berlin the overtures
of the Quai d Or say met with a more favourable reception. For
on the one hand, the German Government was becoming every
day more convinced that England would never allow her to gain
a foothold on the coast of Morocco, and it would surely be worth
while to save what could be saved of her influence and prestige
in those regions by an agreement with France. And in the second
place, there was an entire party in Germany who,

from hatred
for England rather than love of peace, entertained hopes of an
eventual reconciliation with France. The Emperor was at the
head of it and however odd the methods he employed at times,
he had never lost sight of this goal.
Therefore, when during the last months of 1908 incidents oc
curred in Morocco which a few years before would have brought
the West to the verge of war Moulai-Hafid s successful rising
against the client of France, Abdul Aziz,

and the episode of the
six deserters from the Foreign Legion who took refuge at the
German Consulate at Casablanca and were carried off from it by
force, they were settled amicably. It was in vain that public
opinion at Paris caught fire. And in vain that the British staff
made plans for military operations to be undertaken
in concert
Letter from Baron Von Aehrenthal to the Embassy at Berlin, December 15, 1908;
Osterreich-Ungarns Aussenpolitik . . . vol. i,
pp. 602-03). See further on this point Baron
Von AehrenthaTs earlier report of his interview with Isvolsky at Buchlau in September
1908 (Osterreich-Ungarns Aussenpolitik . . vol. i, pp. 91-92). In January 1909 Pichon sug
.
gested that common action should be taken by France, Germany,

and England. Berlin
rejected the suggestion. Stemrich s note for Von Schon, January 22, 1909 (Die
Grosse
Politik . . . vol. xxviu , pp. 191-92). Prince von Billow to Von Tschirschky, February 6,
1909 (ibid., p. 197). Prince von Radolin to the Foreign Office February 18, 1909. (ibid,
pp. 601-02). Prince von Radolin to the Foreign Office, February 19, 1909 (ibid., pp. 605-
06.)
379
with France. Neither in Paris nor in Berlin was war desired by
those in control of foreign policy, and the Casablanca incident
had hardly been settled by referring it to The Hague Court of
Arbitration when negotiations were begun and pushed forward
with the utmost speed for an agreement between the two nations
on the question of Morocco. It was signed on February 9, 1909.
The French Government undertook not to put any obstacles in
the way of German commercial and industrial interests and the
German Government in turn undertook not to stand in the way
of the special political interests of France and both Governments
promised to give a share to each other s subjects in all under
takings for which a French or German firm might obtain a con
cession .
By this recognition of her political interests in Morocco, France

began to obtain her revenge not only for Tangier but also (though
this was denied by the express wording of the agreement) for
Algeciras. Alone among the powers of the Triple Entente, France
reaped an advantage from the Bosnian crisis. In itself this was not
calculated to give pleasure to Russia or England. 1 To cause
anxiety to both was no doubt one of the objects the Wilhelm-

strasse had in view in consenting to the agreement of February 9.
But the English had further reasons for anxiety when they scrutin
ized the text of the agreement. For the real negotiations which-
had led up to its conclusion had taken place not between the two
foreign offices but between the financiers and manufacturers of
both countries. Between the lines of the text could be read an
understanding in which Krupp and Schneider played an import
ant part for a joint development not only of Morocco but the
whole of North Africa, and joint action not only in North Africa
but in Turkey. How could this be good news to the British finan-
1
Sir Arthur Nicolson to Sir Edward Grey, March I, 1909. Trench Ambassador com
municated to-day fresh formula to Russian Minister for Foreign Affairs, which the French
Government suggest should be communicated to Belgrade by the Powers. Minister for
Foreign Affairs took exception to several points in it. ... Every country had a right to
have aspirations, and perhaps in the future Servia might wish to have some frontier recti
fications with Turkey and would not tie her hands in the way suggested. These were the
chief objections which occurred to him on a first hasty reading. Russian Minister for
Foreign Affairs is being much irritated against the French Government/ Also Sir Louis
Mallet s minute: It is very clumsy of the French to be so persistent. . Inform Sir A.
. .
Nicolson that you concur with Mr. Isvolsky in thinking the French proposal objection
able. (British Documents . . vol. v,
.
p. 645.) The Same to the Same, March 24, 1909:
Algeciras had to be revenged, the broken through, and the Trfple Entente dissi
"ring"
pated. The Franco-German agreement was the first step and France is a quarter of the
;
way towards a fuller understanding with Germany. (British Documents . vol. v, p. 736.)
. .
380
ciers and industrialists? Sir Francis Bertie informed Sir Edward
Grey on February 8 that in Constantinople the group of French
financiers had just broken with the English financiers and reached
an understanding with a German group. 1 And London was further
alarmed when die tariff committee in the French Chamber of
Deputies proposed a general increase of tariffs likely to injure
British export trade. In public the British Government might
declare unreserved satisfaction at a Franco-German agreement
its
which was a further guarantee of European peace. In private, Sir

Edward Grey and Sir Charles Hardinge informed the representa
tives of the French Government that it occasioned them no small
anxiety. France must not allow herself to be duped by the German

advances. Other questions besides that of Morocco divided the
two countries. she forget those difficult days when she
Nor must
had been glad to rely on England s friendship in her struggle with
Germany. On
no account must the entente be dissolved.
On
February 9 the King and Queen of England accompanied
by the Colonial Secretary, Lord Crewe, Field-Marshal Lord
Grenfell, and Sir Charles Hardinge, visited the German Emperor
in his capital. It was King Edward s first visit to Berlin after eight
the summer
years on the throne. The visit had been promised
before to counteract the bad impression produced in Germany
by the two royal meetings at Reval and Ischl. It was more neces
sary than ever in February after the
months of diplomatic tension
which had followed. The King had become an old man, his bron
chial tubes were affected, and he was suffering from the effects of
influenza. But it would have been disastrous to cancel his visit.
So he came, braving in the depths of winter the rigours of the
North German climate. During his visit his health grew worse;
he had an attack of coughing followed by a fainting fit which
alarmed his entourage. But he conformed to the exacting cere
monial of a spectacular official reception with a courage universally
recognized.
It was not a pleasant visit. Edward VII was unpopular in Berlin
1
Sir Francis Bertie to Sir Edward Grey, February 18, 1909. (British Documents . . . vol.
v, p. 605).
381
and the police feared hostile demonstrations. These indeed did not
occur, but the public gave him. a frigid welcome. The personal
relations between the two monarchs were worse than ever in
consequence of an incident which the previous October had

astonished and amused thS whole of Europe. The Daily
Telegraph
published the text of the German Emperor s conversation with
an English friend. In the course of the conversation William n
recalled all the services he had rendered to England
during the
Boer War military advice by which the British staff had profited,
and diplomatic assistance when he had thwarted the attempts of
Russia and France to draw him into an anti-English alliance.
And his friendly attitude towards England was the more meritor
ious because the feeling of his entire people was hostile to her.
Why did 1she respond to such generosity with nothing but in
gratitude? It was strange language and aroused universal indig
nation in Germany. It was distasteful both to those Germans who
disliked England and blamed the
Emperor for humbling himself
peace who
before the great rival power and those friends of
wished to see the relations between the two countries improve
and found themselves represented as hating England. In England
the effect was even worse. The account,
partly true, of what the
Emperor had done to help England during the Boer War had an
insulting air of patronage. Moreover, all Englishmen were aware
that his naval policy was directly aimed at their
country and well-
informed persons knew that at this very moment the American
Government at the request of the British was preventing the pub
lication of a
particular number of a certain review in which
another conversation of the Emperor s was
reported which was
1
Daily Telegraph, November 28, 1908. The article described conversations between
and an English host during his .visit the previous autumn.
Already on the very
"William
morrow of the visit the Emperor s loquacity had caused anxiety to his Government. A
Manchester paper, the Daily Despatch, had published a conversation of the Kaiser s with
*a diplomat of
high station The sole object of his navy, the Emperor had said, was to
.
assist the commercial and colonial

expansion of Germany by increasing her prestige at sea.
Germany entertained no designs of conquest in the direction of Scandinavia, Holland,
Belgium, Switzerland or the Baltic provinces which were completely Russian. And in
regard to England the sole desire of German statesmen was to maintain friendly relations
with her. The German Ambassador in London published a denial. The Manchester
Daily
Despatch replied by proving from documentary evidence that the text of the conversation
had been revised and corrected at the Embassy. The Germans another and
replied by
more involved denial whose sole object was to clear the
Emperor. The Daily Despatch
once more published a triumphant reply. It must be added that
though the Emperor s
conduct was regarded as incorrect in Berlin, and the Ambassador was therefore
compelled
to deny it and though the incident revealed differences of
opinion between William and
his chancellor, it attracted
very little public attention. (The Times, December 4-6, 1907.)
382
one long diatribe against the English. William was obliged to
make his excuses publicly and promise to abstain in future from
utterances not previously approved by his ministers. It was there
fore a monarch out of humour with himself, out of humour with
his ministers, out of humour with his
people, and above all out of
humour with the entire British people and their King who bade
the latter welcome.
One thing alone was calculated to diminish his ill humour and
soften his bitter feelings towards his Chancellor, von Biilow,
whom he had loathed since November the brilliant success the
for German
had just achieved
latter
diplomacy and indirectly for
the Emperor The Franco-German agreement was signed
himself.
on the very day Edward VII reached Berlin. The negotiations had
been hastened so that the signature should not be delayed beyond
1
that day at latest. Everyone knew that the agreement between
Austria and Turkey would be shortly concluded and Turkey
accept the annexation of Bosnia without any interference by the

Powers. Russia was isolated and humbled, and indirectly England.
At meeting in Berlin in February 1909, the conqueror on the
this
battlefieldof diplomacy was welcoming the conquered.
Immediately after the royal visit to Berlin, Sir Arthur Nicolson
wrote from Petersburg to Sir Edward Grey. *M. Isvolsky is
seriously alarmed at the communique which has been telegraphed
from Berlin as towhat passed at the recent meeting. Communique.
states that in the Near East there is a complete understanding
1
The Emperor William had wanted the agreement signed before Edward VTTs arrival,
but JulesCambon who brought it from Paris bearing the signatures of the French minis
tersonly reached Berlin on the pth and his train came in after King Edward s. Immediately,
without losing an hour, Von Schon received Cambon in audience and the agreement was
signed. (Baron von Schon Erlebtes. Beitrage zur politischen Geschlchte der neuesten Zelt, 1921,
pp. 87-88. French trans., pp. 120-22). Cf. Von Kiderlen-Wachter to an anonymous
correspondent, March 7, 1909: *You will of course have read that we have concluded the
Morocco agreement which is, I think, a good thing. Between ourselves I may say that we
have carried it through entirely by ourselves with the French Ambassador, M. Cambon.
And it s been a tough job/ Kiderlen continues: Here, as at Constantinople, it is with the
French Ambassador that I get on best. The French I m convinced really want peace. Our
English friends, faithful to their old principles, would be none too distressed if we
slaughtered each other on the Continent while they remained in their island to sell to the
entire world. ... It would be really too idiotic if we had a European war and slew hun
dreds of thousands for the sake of those Serbian swine.* (Ernst Jaeckh Kiderlen- Wa chter
der Staatsmann und Mench. Briefwecsel und Nachlass, 1924, vol. ii, pp. 24-25.) Admiral
von Tirpitz to the Minister of Marine, May 6, 1909. *. . In this dispute between Austria
.
and Serbia England has tried to push France and Russia on. But most charadmstically
France has united with Germany to pour oil on the troubled waters. In any case an "iso
lated"
England has not dared to go to war over the question. (Politische Dokuments, voL i,
p. 151.)
383
between Great Britain and Germany. He says this means Great
Britain has joined Germany and Austria in Near Eastern policy.
France has come into better relations with Germany and Russia has
been isolated. Simultaneously with this he learns, frominformation
from a good source, which is confirmed by the threatening
attitude towards Serbia, adopted both by Austrian and Hun
garian Press, that Austria intends to present shortly an ultimatum

to Serbia, which, if not obeyed, will be probably followed by a,
1
punitive expedition, or execution, as it is termed. For it was
already apparent and became more evident still at the end of
February, that the conclusion of the agreement between Austria
and Turkey and the annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina had
been directed not so much, against Turkey as against Serbia,
against the danger of a Bosnian insurrection, a possible echo of
the Young-Turk revolution, perhaps fomented and certainly
exploited by the pan-Serb agitators of Belgrade. Austria was
arming, and the existence of a complete understanding between
the Austrian and German Staffs was certain though the public did
not know how far it had been actually carried. For at the proposal
of die Austrian Field-Marshal, Conrad von Hotzendorf, a military
convention had been concluded between the two staffs with the
full
approval of both Governments arranging for military assis
tance to be given to Austria, if a declaration of war by Austria
upon Serbia were followed by a Russian declaration of war
against Austria. What would France do if Russia declared war?
2
And what would England do if France were drawn into the war ?
All these possibilities were discussed at Berlin. For the first time,
soldiers and diplomats saw rising above the horizon the storm-
cloud of the world war.
British diplomacy sought to conjure this danger of war without
damage to the prestige of England and the Triple Entente. Sir

Edward Grey suggested joint action by the Powers at Vienna to
discover what the demands of the Austrian Government were and
transmit them to Belgrade, and accepting what he believed to be
a proposal of the German Government, he proposed joint action
1 Sir
Arthur Nicolson to Sir Edward Grey, February 13, 1909 (British Documents . . . vol.
v, p. 596).
2
For the negotiation of this military convention between the two staffs see Field-
Marshal Conrad von Hotzendorf s correspondence with Von Moltke (Feldmarschall
Conrad von Hotzendorf; Aus meiner Dienstzeit, i906-l918, vol. i, pp. 379 sqq.,,63i sqq);
Von Tschirschky to Prince von Biilow, December 17, 1908; and the editor s explanatory
note. (Die Grosse Politik . . . vol. xxvii, pp. 342-44.)
384
atBelgrade to discover what concessions the Serbian Government

was willing to make to Austria and to transmit them in turn to
Vienna. He clung to the dream of ending the dispute by a confer
ence which would give the settlement an international sanction.
This was the veryJast thing Vienna or Berlin desired. They wan
ted Serbia isolated in face of Austria and yielding unconditionally
to her demands. On March 22 the German Ambassador at Peters
burg presented Isvolsky with what amounted to an ultimatum.

He was called upon to give a plain reply to the question whether
or not Russia recognized the annexation of Bosnia and Herze
govina. An ambiguous answer would be interpreted as a refusal,

events would take their course (in other words Austria would
declare war on Serbia) and Isvolsky would be responsible for the
consequences. A council of ministers summoned in haste lasted
end of which Isvolsky, without delaying to
for nine hours at the
inform Paris or London, submitted to the German ultimatum
and agreed to recognize the annexation of the two provinces.
Deserted even by Russia, Serbia capitulated.- A separate agree
ment was concluded between Russia and Turkey, by which the
Russian Government freed Bulgaria from her debts to Turkey
by renouncing certain annual payments due from Turkey to her

self. Another agreement was signed between Montenegro and
Austria, which with the consent of England and Italy released
Montenegro from certain military obligations imposed upon her
by the Treaty of Berlin. In themselves these arrangements were
not unfavourable to the maintenance of peace. To the advantage
of Austria in Bosnia, of Bulgaria in Eastern Roumelia, of Turkey
in the Sandjak, of Montenegro farther to the south, systems of
divided sovereignty had been swept away which for many years
past
had exasperated the political situation in the Balkans. But the
Yugoslav problem in Austria was not solved, had indeed been
made more difficult by the annexation of Bosnia; and on the
other hand the Austrian and German Governments had done
everything to make the settlements actually reached appear not so
much guarantees of peace as a flaunting assertion of the military
power of the two Teutonic empires. The German Government
was conscious of having gained a triumph exactly parallel to the
victory it had won four years earlier. In 1905 after a year of the
Anglo-French entente, it had compelled Delcasse s

resignation.
In
1909, less than two years after the Anglo-Russian agreement,
it
385
had humbled He would indeed most probably have
Isvolsky.
Government had not forbidden it, not wishing to
resigned, if his
give Austria and Germany the honour of a too striking victory
and condemned him to endure for long months of helpless
chafing
the insolence of Viennese diplomacy. But sooner or later he
would be obliged to retire. For it was in vain that he hunted
about for a means of avenging his humiliation, engaging in fur
ther Balkan intrigues in concert with Italy.
Everyone knew that
he was in disgrace with his master, who had never liked England,
and broken by a formidable opposition. Not only did the pan-
Slavists refuse to forgive his final
capitulation, but the reaction
aries, the champions of an understanding with Germany,
exploited his surrender to the disadvantage of the Liberal party,
which supported the understanding with England. 1 And what
was it that made possible these bloodless victories of Germany in
the East and West alike? The fact that neither the French nor the
Russian army counted for anything beside the German. The
Russian army had been weakened and demoralized by two years
of unsuccessful war followed by two years of revolution; the
French by long years of political anarchy. The German
army had
no need of reinforcement. This masterpiece of military technique
and discipline had, it would seem, been brought to the
point of
perfection by the contemporaries of Bismarck. Germany was free
to devote every penny she could raise to the increase of her
navy.
It is not
surprising that the struggle between the two navies, the
English and the German, reached its apogee at the time of the
diplomatic crisis provoked by the annexation of Bosnia and Herze
govina.
Still less shall we be surprised if we consider how intense that

naval rivalry had become already
during the years which preceded
the crisis. We remember the anxiety which Germany s attitude
at The
Hague had caused the English pacifists. And we remember
1 See
Pourtales* letter to Von Biilow written a Herr
year before, June 5, 1908. . . .
Isvolsky remarked that he was the very last to underestimate the dangers of this campaign.
But they .must be looked for in domestic far more than in
foreign politics. The outburst
of jingoism and the unbridled language of the Press were that the revolution
symptoms
had not been completely suppressed The attack upon Germany was conducted almost
exclusively by the radical organs. These advocated for domestic reasons a
rapprochement
with liberal England and a hostile attitude towards a Germany regarded as reactionary
*
(Die Grosse Politik . . . vol. xxvin pp. 445-46.)

,
386
the new
naval law introduced immediately afterwards by the
German Government and the plan of naval construction it laid
down for the following four years, every year from 1908 to 1911
four large battleships ironclads or armoured cruisers of the
latest type. We can imagine the excitement which the correspon
dence between Lord Tweedmouth and the Emperor produced at
that moment of all others. And we can well understand how, in
certain quarters, at once expert and interested, it was decided that
this was the right moment to put pressure on the Liberal Cabinet
programme of naval construction. And the opportunity

to alter its
seemed all the more favourable because CampbeU-Bannerman s ill
ness and retirement and the subsequent remodelling of the Cabinet
encouraged hopes that the policy of the Government would take

a new direction and the imperialists be in the saddle once more.
These interested experts were the large firms who manufactured
guns, armour plate, and ironclads and directly suffered
from the
Admiralty s policy of economy. Five-sixths of the construction
and equipment of the navy were in the hands of private firms
hence the enormous wealth of the industry. A witness, writing
just before
the War, estimated the total capital of the seven largest
armament firms at -^4,000,000. Among these seven Cammell,
Laird & Co. had a capital of .4,000,000, Vickers a capital of
.8,500,000, and Armstrong, Whitworth & Co. a capital of
.9,500,000. Never since the begriming of the century had the
dividends of the last two firms been less than 10 per cent. An
entire group of publicists whose activities were the more embar
to their party,
rassing for the ministers because they belonged
denounced the power of these firms. 1
Consider the composition of the boards of directors in these
officers were constantly
large firms. Naval engineers and naval
entering the service of shipbuilding firms
where promotion was
more rapid and far more lucrative. Elswick had taken Sir William
White from the Admiralty, and when he went back to it Sir Philip
Watts, also a formal naval officer, took his pkce. Vickers Maxim &
had taken Trevor Dawson from the army, Dunn from the navy.
From the boards of directors let us turn to the shareholders in
these large armament firms. From the information published by
Ferris, The War Traders, an Exposure, 1913. He quotes The Economist

1 G. H. for April
26, 1913, H. N. Brailsford, The War of Steel and Gold, a Study of the Armed Peace, 1914.
J. T. Walton Newbold, How Europe armed for Wart 1916.
387
a provincial paper in 1909 it appears that the shareholders of
Armstrong &
Whitworth included sixty peers, fifteen baronets,
twenty knights, twenty officers of die army or navy, eight Mem
bers of Parliament, and eight journalists. And in 1913 a pamphle
teer called attention to the presence among these shareholders of
two Cabinet ministers and two members of the Opposition Front
Bench. In all this, we must bear in mind, there is no question of
corruption in the strict sense. We have to do with a society so
constituted that a large number of the ruling class have a personal
interest in the prosperity of large firms which in turn depend for
their prosperity on Government orders and are the more flourish
ing the more abundant they are. And the circle of those who had,
to use Bentham s phrase, a sinister interest in a policy of large
armaments was wider, far wider, than this. Armstrong & Vickers
employed 120,000 workers at Newcasde-on-Tyne, a third of the
entire population that is to say, a large town was living on war
or the preparation for it. To reduce armaments would be to con
demn a portion of these men to unemployment. In recent years
government orders had even from time to time been increased to
1
help the country to surmount a period of depression. It was a
dangerous expedient. For when the crisis had passed they dared
not throw on to the street the men for whom work had been
artificially provided. This in turn produced a permanent conflict
between the economic interests of these men and the political
idealsthey usually held. They would elect a Unionist, the cham
pion of a large navy. Or, if from habit they elected a Liberal or a
member of their own class, he could hardly put up a stiff resist
ance to a policy of naval construction which supplied his electorate
with wages: least of all when unemployment was rife and British
industry was passing through a slump as at the beginning of 1908.
The Admiralty had one good reason fp r choosing to have its
ships built by private firms the competition between them.
According to current belief competition favoured technical im
provement while reducing prices. At the end of the nineteenth
1
*In 1884 began that sinister form of unemployment relief administered henceforward
at regular intervals by the Government in the form of
Admiralty extravagance. A careful
study of the technical and trade literature of the early eighties makes quite evident the
influence on armament policy of bad trade in the shipping and engineering branches of
industry. It was this that made possible the success of the naval agitation which would
otherwise have broken in vain against the Radicalism of such centres as Birmingham,
Sheffield, Tyneside, and Clydeside. (J. T. Walton Newbold, How Europe armedfor War,
p. 26.)
388
century the Admiralty patronized in turn Armstrong and Vickers.

But it was in vain that
England remained the citadel of competi
one of the European countries in which industrial unification
tion,
met with the most powerful opposition. Here too the ten
dency to amalgamation made itself felt and, it would seem, its
operation was particularly evident in the armament industry.

Sometimes two rival firms amalgamated for example, Vickers,
Son & Co. and Maxim Nordenfeldt of Birmingham in 1896. Or
one firm absorbed another. The Clydebank Shipbuilding and
Engineering Co. was absorbed by John Brown & Co. in 1898,
and Napier of Govan by William Beardmore & Co. of Parkhead
in 1901. Or the absorption might be only partial, one firm be
coming the dependency of another, a fate which befell Beardmore

& Co. a year after it had bought up Napier. Vickers bought half
the shares and by lending money to the firm enabled it to set up
on the Clyde the largest shipyards England had known. Or again,
without the avowed formation of a cartel of the German type the
co-operation between leading armament firms became so close
that it amounted to partnership. Such was the indefinable bond
which from the opening of the twentieth century united Arm-
strong-Whitworth with Vickers, Son & Maxim. Two firms
long hostile were now reconciled and strengthened by the sup
port of the Nobel Trust. Thus a solid block of firms was consti
tuted, capable between them of building, equipping, and arming
an entire squadron. This powerful combine however did not
even now include all the firms engaged in naval construction.
We notice the formation of an opposition combine (Charles
Cammell, John Brown, Laird Brothers, Thomas Firth, Fairfield
Shipbuilding Co., Coventry Ordnance Works). It might have
served the public interest by competing with the former syndi
cate for Admiralty orders-. The competition between the two
groups did not however take this form. They asked for more
orders, enough to satisfy both.
At the beginning of 1906, Mulliner, Chairman of the Coventry

Ordnance Company, called the attention of the Admiralty to the
alarming extension of the Essen works and tried to convince the
389
department that its
object was to intensify and accelerate naval
construction. But the Admiralty refused to communicate these
alarmist conjectures to the Cabinet. He then addressed himself
with greater success to the Secretary for War, Haldane. But
Haldane s insistence failed to overcome the opposition of his
colleagues, who remained unmoved even by Tirpitz s statement
in November that Germany was now building ships at a faster
rate than England. Reduction of expenditure on preparations
for war was one of the fundamental points of the pro
gramme on which the Liberals had been returned in 1906,

and the ministers felt that to abandon it would amount to a
surrender. But their hands were forced by an appeal to the
leaders of the Opposition. 1
On March 2, 1908, the Under-Secretary of State for the
Admiralty, Edward Robertson, attempted to prove that a reduc
tion of naval expenditure did not endanger the safety of the coun
try and in particular did not involve the abandonment of the
famous Two-Power Standard to which appeal was always being
made. Apart from ships of the pre-Dreadnought type (here the
overwhelming numerical superiority of England was undisputed)
England would possess in 1910 nine Dreadnoughts and three
Cruisers of the Invincible type as against two French Dread
noughts and Germany s four Dreadnoughts and two Invincibles

that is to say, a superiority of twelve to eight. Allowing for the
possibility of accelerations in the German rate of construction,

Germany might possess seven Dreadnoughts and three Invincibles
by the end of 1910. If the two French vessels were added there
would be twelve Dreadnoughts in the possession of the two
powers to the English, twelve. The Two-Power Standard would
therefore be maintained. And the following week in reply to his
critics, he proved that a year later England would once more have
a positive advantage, would possess fourteen [Dreadnoughts as
against ten German and two French that is to say, two large
ironclads more than Germany and France combined. Then with
the aid of facts supplied by Mulliner, Balfour, speaking after two
or three Unionists of lesser importance, contested the official
figures. Starting from the fact that the construction of the battle
ships laid down in the German in
programme began where- June
1
For the Mulliner episode see Mulliner s Diary* (The Times, January 3, 1910), also
G. H. Ferris, The War Traders, an Exposure, 1913, pp. 28 sqq.
390
as the construction of the British ships began six months later he
sought to prove though in January 1911 England would cer
that
tainly possess twelve Dreadnoughts to Germany s nine, in

the
autumn of the same year, she would only possess twelve to Ger
many s thirteen. The Germans were building four Dreadnoughts
a year, the British only two. Consequently the time is not only
far distant, but imminent, when in regard to that particular type
of vessel they will be, not our equal, but our superior. 1 The
Government, he said, was returning to the Two-Power Standard;
it would be truer to say that it was being driven back to it by the
attacks of the Opposition. In 1906 Campbell-Bannerman had
attempted to escape from the onerous formula. Before applying

it, he argued, we must consider which the other naval powers
were, and after the Algeciras conference we were justified in

doubting the likelihood of an alliance between France and Ger
2
many against England. At once the Unionists were up in arms
as though their own leaders the year before had not declared the
standard obsolete. Nevertheless, the Prime Minister repeated his
contention the following year: he was, he said, entirely in favour
of the standard but questioned whether it were still applicable
supposing we -were at any time to be in close alliance with the
two Powers with the largest navies , 3 In reply Balfour main
tained not only that the British navy ought to be equal in number
of ships to those of any other two powers but further that it
should have a margin of superiority over the two. 4 A year later,
when Campbell-Bannerman was already seriously ill, and Prime
Minister in name alone, it was a modified form of Balfour s for
mula that Asquith defended when he asked for a navy strong
enough to safeguard England against all contingencies that can
5
reasonably enter into the calculations of statesmen . Eight months
later, he allowed a Unionist speaker to draw from him the state
ment that England must possess a preponderance of 10 per cent
over the combined strengths, in capital ships, of the two next
1 H. of C, March 9, 1908 (Parliamentary Debates, 4th Series, vol. clxxxv, p. 1181).
2 H. of C., July 27, 1906 (ibid., voL cxlii, p. 116).
3
H. of C., March 5, 1907 (ibid., vol. clxx, pp. 673-4).
C., March 5, 1907 (ibid., vol. clxx, p. 676). It was word for word the doctrine
* H. of
which Arthur Lee had preached the previous year. The Two-Power Standard has always
meant that, in the matter of efficient first-class battleships, we should have a reasonable
margin of superiority over the two next strongest Powers combined and even if those
two Powers should happen, at any time, to be our two best friends, the formula would
none the less apply/ (National Review, April 1906, vol. xlvii, p. 919.)
5
H. of C., March 2, 1908 (Parl Deb., 4th Ser., vol. dxxxv, p. 377).
391
1
strongest powers As he still refused to see any inconsistency be
.
tween this formula and the formula he had previously defended

he was urged to be more explicit. Did he mean the two next
strongest powers, whatever they may be, and wherever they may
be situated? Yes, he replied, under existing conditions and under
2
all foreseeable circumstances There was always the same ambi
.
guity, due to the fact that neither on the Government nor on the
Opposition benches did speakers express plainly what was at the
back of their minds.
When Opposition speakers asked whether in applying the Two-
Power Standard all the Powers were taken into account, they were
tiiinking of the United States. Does this mean that they contem
plated the possibility of war against an alliance between Germany
and America? Certainly not. They explicitly stated that an even
tuality of this kind was not the ground on which they founded
their demand for a navy at least equal to the combined navies of
two other Powers. And when a speaker on the ministerial benches
said that his party was content with a navy capable of facing any
probable combination of two Powers, he meant that he was

excluding America from his calculations. Was he then thinking
of Germany and France? Presumably. But Campbell-Bannerman
never said so in plain terms and he had good reason to regard such
a combination as improbable. The truth of the matter was that
while everybody spoke of two Powers, everybody was thinking
only of one. England had returned to the situation in which she
had been placed half a century before when she regulated the size
of her navy with reference to the strength of the French navy
alone. But it was now a more formidable navy which caused her
anxiety the German. Those who wanted account taken of the

American fleet in applying the Two-Power Standard did so
because they knew that the American navy was more modern and
increasing more rapidly than the French that is to say, they were
really demanding for the British navy a more marked superiority
over the German. Those who on the contrary would take account
of the French navy alone were those who were content with a
lower margin of superiority. According to the most optimistic
calculations England in 1910 would possess as many capital ships
1
H. of C., November 12, 1908 (Parliamentary Debates, 4th Series, vol. cxcvi,
p. 560).
2 H. of C., November 23, 1908 (ibid., pp. 1768-69).
392
as Germany and France together. But why? Because in 1910
France, if her programme of construction were carried out, would
possess only
two Dreadnoughts1 that is to say, this application
of the Two-Power Standard would give England only two
Dreadnoughts more than the German ten. That was not enough
if England were to maintain her naval supremacy. What then did
those want who wished to maintain this supremacy undisputed.
Gradually, by a novel interpretation of the Two-Power Standard,
they had come to demand no longer a navy equal (or superior by
10 per cent) to the two strongest foreign navies, but, what was a
different thing altogether, a navy twice as strong in capital ships
as the German. Or, employing a formula better calculated to im
press the imagination
of the public, they asked that for every
Dreadnought Germany laid down, England should lay down
two: two keels for one/ 2
The great naval manoeuvres held in the summer of 1908 the

most formidable Europe had yet witnessed were no doubt in
tended to reassure the public by bringing home to them the mag
nitude of England s provision for war. Two hundred and seventy
ships took part with a total tonnage of 1,044,000
tons and close
on 70,000 sailors. What in comparison were the sixty-two Ger-
1
In point of fact France had no Dreadnoughts in 1910.
* *
Of course there is no question as to what John Bull will reply to this programme, be
it little or big. He will say that he is sorry, but if it must be so he cannot help himself... .
He wishes for nothing more than the maintenance of the status quo. He has no army to
speak of; his only defence is his navy. The maintenance of its supremacy is for him a
matter of life or death. ... He simply says to himself: "What a bore I The two foremost
nations in the world might surely find something better to do with their money than
spend it in a breakneck, beggar-my-neighbour competition in warships. But if Germany
insists, what must be must be." He will not take much heed of programmes on paper, but
the moment the challenger lays down the keels of a new Dreadnought, he will lay down
the keels of two/ fW. T. Stead, Review ofReviews, vol. xxxvi, December 1907, p. 555)
It is recognized that command of the European Seas is an inflexible condition of our
national security; how is this to be maintained? The "Two-Power Standard" is a good
phrase, but it is by no means easy to define and exemplify in material and in personnel, in
ships and guns and men. It is far easier, far clearer and infinitely more safe to adopt the
*
simple standard, and avoiding "paper programmes for every ship which our great rival
builds, to build two of equal strength. Let Germany force the pace, but let England win
the race. That is a pregnant phrase and a plain policy which every man of the British
electorate can understand. Of any sound scheme of national or imperial defence, naval
supremacy based upon the simple proportion of two to one is the vital essence/ (Lord
Esher, National Review, May 1908. For the problem as it appeared at this date see Archi
bald Hurd, *A British Two-Power Fleet/ Nineteenth Century, June 1908, vol. Ixiii, pp.
485 sqq.
393
PROM BOSNIA TO AGADIR
man ships which had just finished their annual manoeuvres on the
opposite coast of the North Sea? It was the first time that the
recently formed Home Fleet had been mobilized and the trial
proved without calling up the reserve or denuding the

successful
ports of the number of men required to carry on the ordinary-

work of naval bases. Sixty vessels were still left unused. It was in
vain that to avoid wounding German susceptibilities the theme
of the manoeuvres was kept a strict secret. It was perfectly obvious
that both in the Channel and in the North Sea the problem handled
was to repel a foreign invasion or raid. One incident was the
capture of Wick, the landing in that little town of a hostile force
not to occupy it presumably but to obtain with the utmost pos
sible speed all the information
required and then to re-embark
without interference. Inevitably public opinion, instead of being
reassured by the magnitude of the British fleet, was alarmed by
the success of the imaginary raid. And the alarm was increased a
few weeks later when some local manoeuvres off the mouth of
the Tyne were interrupted by the appearance of a German tor
pedo boat. The Admiralty lavished explanations designed to
calm the fears of the public. The torpedo boat was simply one of
the vessels guarding die fishing fleet, it flew an international flag
and had come only to take in a fresh supply of water. That was all
very well. The peril of invasion was the staple topic of conversa
tion all the same.
A weighty Conservative organ, the Quarterly Review, published
an important article on the German Peril* couched in the lan
1
guage of panic, which irritated the German Chancellor extremely.
Such nervousness he considered unworthy of the British Press; it
reminded him of France. 2 At the other end of the social scale in a
1
We
Quarterly Rev lew, July 1908 (vol. ccrx, pp. 264 sqq.)- See especially p. 291. hold
a quarter of the world. By what right do we hold it, if might be once invoked? White
power can be the only solid basis of white dominion. If this be true, our huge pyramid is
poised upon an apex. In the whole of the King s Dominions there are fewer white men
than in Germany alone and we are increasing far more slowly than the Kaiser s subjects.*
Also towards the end, p. 298 Heedless Chauvinism will not avail us. Let us be quiet and
prepare. Let us do nothing to hurry on a conflict. Let us not put ourselves in the wrong,
as the French did in 1870. Above all, let us not despise our antagonists. The Germans, with
all their faults, are a very great and
patient people, formidable, not because of what is to
be condemned in their modern characteristics, but because of what is excellent. Like them
we must defend ourselves. Neither foreign alliances nor enteiites will compensate in the
end for any deficiency in our own strength.*
*
Interview with Von Billow by Sidney Whitman, Standard, September 14, 1908. See
in the same number a leader which criticizes the interview. Prince Billow affects to ignore
them (the pan-German writers). He would do better if he could show that he is not, v so far
as the opportunity arises, playing, perhaps against his will and
judgment, into their hand.
394
Socialistweekly, ti\e Clarion, a campaign on behalf of conscrip
tion conducted not only by Blatchford, whose patriotic attitude
during the Boer War we have already noticed,
but by Hyndman,
the orthodox Marxist, caused a great stir. In all the leading
papers a host
of letters appeared denouncing the presence on
the east coast of a host of German spies disguised as tourists or
1
waiters.
The question of accelerating the tempo
of naval construction
and the extent to which this should be done was the subject of
heated debates in the Cabinet. In August Sir Edward Grey made
a final desperate effort to persuade William n to build fewer ships
so that England need not build so many. When King Edward on
his to Ischl paid a brief visit to the German Emperor at
way
so drawn up
Cronberg, Grey gave the King two memoranda
that they could be handed directly to the Emperor. The King dis
liked the commission. He was aware that disarmament proposals
made by a stronger to a weaker power are more likely to irritate
than persuade. In the end he kept the memoranda in his
off better because serious questions
pocket and the meeting passed
were avoided. 2 Edward VII confided the task of presenting the
documents to Sir Charles Hardinge and his interview with the
Emperor was stormy. The Kaiser disputed Sir Charles figures,

which, he said, were hardly consistent with the recent spectacle
of 300 ships fairing part in manoeuvres. Cease to build or build
more slowly/ Hardinge suggested. To do so the Emperor ,
a matter in
answered, would be to defeat ourselves for this is
stake/ *I looked
which the national honour and prestigeare at
him straight in the face , William
wrote to the Chancellor in his
account of the interview, and he blushed crimson. frank My
language did not fail to produce
its effect. That is the way in
Englishman on
3
which we should to the
speak
But the
English/
his side, writes in his report: 1 do not think it is to be regretted
scare
1
The Times, August 21, 1908, The Spy Mania. The article protests against the
which had assumed the proportions of an epidemic. See also Contemporary Rwiew,
January 1910: About German Spies, vol. xcvii, p. 42.
Such pernicious works of fiction
have been positively pouring from the press for the last two years : "The Invasion 9! 1910
The Swoop of the (Teutonic) Vulture Great Raid
The War Inevitable "The
How the Germans took London: Forewarned Forearmed The Invaders* stir Britain Story "The
of the Coming War While Britain Slept A Story of Invasion that will
*
to its Depths.*
2
Sir Sidney Lee, King Edward VII, vol. ii, pp. 614 sqq.
3 H
William to Prince von Billow, August 13, 1908 (Die Grosse Politik . . . voL xxiv, pp.
127-8).
395
that a clear exposition of the views of the Government on the
subject of naval armaments has been placed before the Emperor
and the German Government, since their reply offers a complete
justification to Parliament and to the world
at large for
any
counter-measures that His Majesty s Government may decide
upon taking in the near future. Although it is to be regretted
that the German Government have assumed such an uncom
promising attitude ... it is as well to know the worst and be

1
prepared for it.
That the Cronberg interview exercised a decisive influence on
the Cabinet s naval
policy there can be no doubt. But the country
might not have supported the Government s new policy if it had
not been aroused at the beginning of October by the Austrian
annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and protracted the crisis
which ensued. London thought Germany was behind the Austrian
move. Vienna thought that England was plotting a naval demon
stration in the Adriatic. Metternich retailed to his Government
reports that General French and Sir John Fisher did not consider
the moment unpropitious for a war between England and Ger
2
many, and transmitted to Berlin an article from the Standard
arguing in favour of a preventive war. On November 23, Lord
3
Roberts moved in the House of Lords a resolution calling upon

the Government to adopt the military measures necessary to deter
the most formidable foreign nation from attempting to land an
army on British soil and on the other hand in view of altered
strategic conditions in the North Sea to ask the Committee of
4
Imperial Defence to re-examine the problem of possible invasion.
Two months later, a play of very mediocre quality called An
Englishman s Home, enjoyed a long run at a London theatre. It
1
Sir Charles Hardinge Memorandum of August 16, 1908 (British Documents . . . vol. vi,
p. 188).
a
Count Metternich to Prince von Billow, December 1, 1908 (Die Grosse Politik . vol. . .
xxvi1 . p. 280).
8
Prince von BUlow to Admiral von Tirpitz (Politische Dokutncnte, vol. i, p. 96). The
article in question was probably the leader of November 18 which however did not say
exactly what Metternich and Von Billow read into it. We

quote the most characteristic
passage of tins vigorous piece of writing: At this moment neither side dreams of using
its navy in an aggressive attack on the other; but will that state of
things continue? WiS
not keenness of competition develop into bitterness as the strain begins to tell; will not the
temptation grow until it becomes overmastering, on one side or the other, to use the
force that has been accumulated to strike the adversary a crushing blow?
4 H. of
L., November 23, 1908 (Parliamentary Debates, 4th Series, vol. cxcvi, pp. 1679
sqq.). See especially in his speech pp. 1685-1696. The motion was carried but only when
Lord Roberts had agreed to withdraw the second part which seemed too obviously aimed
at Germany.
396
represented the house of a rich country gentleman in Essex where

nothing was discussed except amusement and sport, or if politics
were mentioned at all, it was only in reference to a general strike
of Post Office employees which disagreeably affected all the
members of the party. Suddenly the home was surrounded by
army whose uniforms were taken at first for English.
a strange
What army was it? The army of The Emperor of the North .
One of the heroes of the piece snatched a sporting rifle to defend

himself and was shot on the spot for his breach of the laws of war.
The Territorial Army came on the scene only to cover itself with
ridicule. Finally, the regular army arrived and saved the situation
but everyone knew that the ending was conventional and the
dramatist s real attitude one of hopeless pessimism. At the same
time a piece by Barrie was being acted in London, What Every
Woman Knows. It became the current witticism to call the new
play What Every German Knows It was an extremely effective
.
piece of propaganda and yielded

a host of recruits to the Terri
torial Army. The Government took it under its patronage and
the Censor would not allow a parody to be put on the stage.
The primary object of this propaganda was to strengthen the

army so as to provide against an invasion possible in spite of the
fleet.But the nation s fundamental concern was still the navy. In
March 1908 Asquith had expressly pledged himself to the con
struction in 1909 of a sufficient number of ships to prevent Ger
many having more Dreadnoughts than England at the end of 1911 .
In May the Cabinet at a secret meeting after violent debates in

which the new First Lord of the Admiralty, McKenna, and Sir
Edward Grey threatened to resign if their demands were not
complied with, decided to lay down four Dreadnoughts
in 1909
(as against
two in 1908), and six if at the beginning of the year the
the
situation were sufficientlygrave to warrant that addition to
programme. The seemed justified in July
pessimists predictions
when Krupp issued new bonds to the value of .2,000,000 and
still more
justified in November
when it became known that
orders were being given to the German shipyards six months be-
397
PROM BOSNIA TO AGABIR
fore the publication of the naval estimates. The German Govern
ment through its Ambassador in London protested against these
suspicions and Asquith himself took note in a speech of his pro
test. But the British might well feel alarm- A nation which had
1
twice taken Europe by surprise with her Dreadnoughts and In-

vincibles had reason to be afraid that Germany might retaliate
in kind.
It was a day of
triumph for Mulliner when on March 3, 1909,
he was invited to lay his views before a meeting of the entire
Cabinet. What action would the ministers take? Would they
adopt the German plan, itself inspired by the system pursued in
England at the close of the nineteenth century and commit Parlia
ment for a term of years to a programme of naval construction?
The Liberal Parliament was not in the humour for such com
mittals. Would they have recourse to a loan to
lighten the imme
diate burden of expenditure involved? The Radicals would have
none of it. They wanted to make the taxpayer, the wealthy tax
payer in particular, fed the cost of a policy of armament. This
was the explanation of the great Budget of 1909; on these terms,
but only on these terms, would Lloyd George and Churchill and
their followers agree to a more extensive programme of naval
construction. How
many Dreadnoughts then should be built?
Four? Six? The Navy League and the entire Unionist party wan
ted eight. Their desire was gratified. It was decided to
lay down
four Dreadnoughts at once and four others kter in the
year if
circumstances demanded it. Finally, Parliament sanctioned the
construction of eight Dreadnoughts in two
relays. All were to
be launched and equipped by the end of March 1912. On both
occasions less than a hundred members voted
against the pro
gramme, Nationalists, Labour members, and a handful of Liberals.
After three years of Radical Government the
supporters of arma
ment to the teeth had triumphed. 2
The enemies of Liberal pacifism were to gain yet another vic
tory. The Second Peace Conference held at The Hague in 1907 had
at least reached one important decision. According to the estab
lished usage in wartime, the were national tribunals
prize courts
each applying its own rules and, as
everything led one to suppose,
1 H. of C, March i<5, 1909 (Parliamentary Debates, Commons, 1909, fth Series, voL ii,
P- 9<5o).
1
For the Naval Scare of 1909 see E W. Hurst, The Six Panics and other Essays, 1913, pp.
62 sqq.
398
their judgments were determined by the interests of the nation
to which the judges belonged. In future would be an inter
there
national prize court to decide all disputed cases in the event of
war. But this international tribunal, which would it was hoped
be supernational, must apply a definite code of naval war
fare. An international naval conference sat in London from
December 4, 1908, to February 26, 1909, and drew up a declara
tion known as the Declaration of London which seemed in many
respects to constitute a notable improvement upon the Declara

tion of Paris of 1856. It was no slight gain that three lists were
compiled of objects unconditionally contraband, objects which
might be declared contraband under particular circumstances and
objects which tinder no circumstances might be regarded as con
traband.
It remained to ratify the declaration. This would be done by the
King on his ministers* advice without any
previous debate in
Parliament. But on the one hand the Government had given it to
he understood that if the House of Commons decided against the
Declaration of London it would not advise the King to ratify it.
On the other hand the declaration was bound up with the estab
lishment of an International Prize Court, and English participation
in the court would require an Act of Parliament. Lively debates
took place in the House of Commons on April 7. Sir Edward
Grey promised that the House should have entire liberty to dis
cuss the Declaration of London. Which party would prevail in
the debate? It was to England s interest as a neutral power that
merchantmen should be protected against the seizure of their
goods by belligerent vessels. But in the spring of 1909 who could
believe that England would be neutral in the next war? It would
no doubt be to England s advantage as a belligerent if neutral
ships could maintain her food supply with impunity. But her
real
interest demanded that she should count for her food supply upon
her enormous mercantile marine, protected by her huge navy,
which would take the opportunity furnished by the war to bring
the commerce of all other nations, belligerent or neutral, to a
standstill. An entire- session, crowded as we already know with
other business, passed before the House of Commons was free to
deal with the question. And the following year both matters, tie
Naval Prizes Bill and the Declaration of London, were allowed
to drop. The Bill did not even reach a second reading. The party
VOL VI 15
opposed to internationalizing the code of naval warfare and
granting greater freedom to neutral commerce finally won the
day.
The which led a few months later to the fall of the
incidents
First Sea Lord are more obscure and more difficult to interpret.
In July 1908 the Press learnt that Admiral Lord Charles Beresford,
Commander of the Channel Squadron, had given two of his
ships orders which, it was alleged, would have produced
a catas
trophe if one of the officers had not taken it on himself to disobey

them. Immediate publicity was given to the act of splendid in
subordination for which Sir John Fisher accepted die respon
sibility. It was
in vain that Lord Charles demanded an inquiry.
Not only was the demand refused but he was informed that the
period of his command would be reduced from three to two
years. Retired from the service on March 24, 1909, he was re
ceived by a cheering crowd at Dover first, then in London and
launched a savage campaign both in the Press and in Parliament
against Fisher s policy. He told stories and got his friends to tell
1
stories of the measures to which Fisher resorted against any mem

bers of the high command whose ideas differed from liis own. 2
He criticized the new methods ofDraining officers. He denounced
as a sham the
pledge Fisher had given to Parliament to provide a
stronger fleet with fewer men, fewer ships and at a lower cost.
He condemned the Dreadnought policy which had pkyed into
.
the hands of Germany by leading England to concentrate her
entire strength in home waters and neglect to build not only those
light cruisers required to protect British commerce on the high

seasbut even the torpedo-boat destroyers without which her
giant ironclads were exposed to the risk of sudden destruction.
He protested against the absence of any plan of campaign. If war
broke out were they to be at the mercy of the First Sea Lord or,
even worse, left to the rival improvisations of the First Sea Lord
1 Lord Charles Beresford s arguments will be found collected in the book he published
at the beginning of 1912 entitled: The Betrayal. Being a Record of Facts
concerning Naval
Policy and Administration from the Year i902 to the Present Time, The Memories of Admiral
Lord Charles Beresford Written by Himself, 1914, contain a handsome acknowledgment of
the improvements in naval methods effected by Fisher when in command of the Mediter
ranean squadron but are silent as to the quarrel between the two Admirals.
*
For the Bacon episode see Sir George Armstrong s speech at the Constitutional Club
on April 2, 1909 and the debates in the Commons, April 6, May 5, 19, 24 and 27, 1909
(Parliamentary Debates, Commons 1909, 5th Series, vol. iii, pp. 919, 1132; vol. iv, pp. 1032
sqq.; vol. v, pp. 383 sqq.; 821 sqq., 1378) and in defence of Bacon his biograpHy of Lord
in
Fisher, vol. ii, pp. sqq.
400
and the Commander of the Fleet? The navy should be provided
with a general staff like that with which Haldane had equipped
the army.
At a juncture when growing nervousness fostered every kind of
scare, Lord Charles provoked a powerful outburst of popular
feeling, and under its pressure the Government decided to hold

an inquiry. A sub-committee of the Committee of Imperial
Defence was formed, consisting of the Premier, Sir Edward Grey,
Haldane, and Lord Morley. It reported in August. On the whole
its conclusions were favourable to Fisher but not so
unreservedly
that he was satisfied with the report. The sub-committee regretted
the absence of cordial relations between the Board of Admiralty
and the Commander-in-Chief of the Channel Fleet without
attributing the entire blame for this state of things either to
Fisher or Beresford and like the malcontent Admiral it advised the
establishment of a general staff for the navy. 1 The report could
not therefore be regarded by Lord Charles Beresford as a defeat.
At the end of October he returned to the charge with an attack
upon the Board of Admiralty for cashiering two officers whose
only fault was that they had given evidence in his favour before
the sub-committee. Asquith protested against the publicity with
which he brought his charges and the First Lord of the Admiralty
attempted to disprove them. Notwithstanding, Lord Charles had
reason to claim a victory when at the beginning of December the
public learnt that Sir John Fisher had been replaced as First Sea
Lord by Admiral Sir Arthur Knyvet Wilson.
A month later Sir John was raised, or rather banished, to the
peerage^
Fisher s opponents in the navy were anything but pacifists and
the Admiral must, it would seem, be reckoned among the
s fall
many incidents which in 1909 witnessed to the alarm the English

felt atthe thought of being insufficiently armed against the danger
of a war with Germany. But the pacifists hated the ruinous policy
of the Dreadnoughts, and detested the tactless remarks with which
that genius or charlatan (or was he both at once?) had irritated
Germany. His fall delighted Berlin and certainly helped to relax

the tension between England and Germany when at the end of
1 Return to an Order
of the Honourable the House of Commons, dated 12th August, 1909: or
Report of the Sub-Committee of the Committee of Imperial Defence appointed to inquire into
certain questions of Naval Policy raised by Lord Charles Beresford.
401
FROM BOSNIA TO AGA0IR
1909 after the panic of the previous spring, relations between the
two powers improved and a period of calm followed until
another crisis arose.
H ATTEMPTS AT A RAPPROCHEMENT BETWEEN

ENGLAND AND GERMANY
We must not imagine that all these incidents, the vote by the
House of Commons of the necessary credits to lay down four
additional Dreadnoughts, the abandonment of the Declaration
of London, and Sir John Fisher s fall, produced a deep impression
on the public. Its was turned elsewhere. The triumphal
attention
return at Croydon, in March, of a Unionist candidate on a pro
gramme of tariff reform and armaments must be regarded as the
final episode of the naval scare* which had lasted so many months.
After this the struggle over the Budget held the stage. Lloyd
George and his friends were thus enabled to take their revenge
upon the imperialists Liberal as well as Unionist. Until the
autumn of 1908 Lloyd George had "waged a desperate struggle
against them not only within the Cabinet but at public meet
ings. He had approached the German Ambassador, Metternich,
in the hope of finding some way of reconciling the two nations.
When in August he visited Germany, it was not only to study on
the spot the working of the insurance system but to discuss politics
with journalists and statesmen, and if the interview with the
Emperor which William would gladly have given, could not be
arranged and the Chancellor refused to receive him, at least he
had a long conversation with the Minister of the Interior, Beth-
1
mann-HoEweg.
After this he had been swept off his feet by the current of anti-
German passion and had agreed to find the money to build the
eight Dreadnoughts. But he soon recovered himself. He was
delighted to see those who had demanded the Dreadnoughts
1 Note
by the Minister for Foreign Affairs to Von Schon August 7, 1908. Prince von
Btttow to the Minister for Foreign Affairs, August 21, 1908. The journalist, August Stein,
to Prince von Biilow, August 22, 1908. (Die Grosse Politik . . . voL xxv, pp. 119, 138, 142.)
Harold Spender, The Prime Minister* 1920, pp. 159-161.
402
ENGLAND AND GERMANY
refuse topay the price, and launched an attack upon their selfish
ness and greed. When in December the moment came to dissolve
Parliament and invite the country to choose between the suppor
ters and opponents of the Budget it was in vain that the
Daily
Mail opened its columns to the Socialist patriot, Blatchford, and
Balfour in the speech in which he unfolded his programme insis
ted upon the German peril. It is safe to say that the gains, such as
they were, of the Unionist party at the January Election were
due not so much to the fear of Germany as to a revolt against the
Radicals fiscal policy. Nor did they wrest the Parliamentary
majority from the Liberals, Labour members, and Nationalists,
and the Liberal opponents of militarism could flatter themselves
with the hope that now die panic of the previous winter had
passed they would fulfil the promises made in 1906 and keep the
imperialists in check, as they had done until the Second Peace
Conference.
They were encouraged by the embarrassment which the atti
tude of the imperialists betrayed. There was nothing which re
sembled that bellicose and aggressive enthusiasm which ten years
before had led England to conquer South Africa. Since the end
of the Boer War England had not added a square inch to her
Empire. In Asia she was making terms with Russian imperialism,
in Africa assisting French imperialism. Why
all this
prudence, all
these concessions? Because die dominant sentiment in England
was fear of the power of Germany. The policy of the Foreign
Office was not precisely to isolate Germany; at the beginning
indeed it had been an attempt to prevent Germany from isolating
England, but to form a species of alliance between England,
France, and Russia as a counterpoise to the Triple Alliance, thus
applying the doctrine of the European balance of power. But if
this aim was openly avowed in the diplomatic despatches of the
leading British diplomatists, Sir Charles Hardinge or Sir Nicolas

O Connor, die Prime Minister a#d the Minister for Foreign
Affairs,though sharing their ideas, were careful not to express
them so frankly. They disclaimed die too bellicose design of
arraying one group of powers against another. If their public
statements were to be trusted, the entente with France and Russia
did not imply hostility towards Germany. And they taxed their
ingenuity to state the policy of the European balance of power in
the language of the European concert that is, in the pacifist
403
terminology current with a nation which, if it feared Germany,
feared her just because it entertained an increasing horror of war.
But when we speak of the terminology of pacifism we must be

clear as toour meaning. For there are two pacifisms speajdng two
languages. There is a Socialist pacifism, and there is a pacifism
which is the reverse of the Socialist. Socialist pacifism sees in
capitalism the source of war as of all the other evils which afflict
modern society. And in obedience to the materialist philosophy
of history it looks for an economic cause of war which it states as
follows. The structure of industrial society is such that the pro
duction of a great civilized nation cannot be absorbed
by the
national market. For this to be of the
possible the wages working
class would have to be such as to enable it to purchase the entire
produce of its labour. But in that case what would become of the
employer s profit? The employer is therefore compelled to look
for foreign markets for his goods when the home market has been
glutted. These markets he finds at first in the other civilised coun

tries but
they become industrialized in their turn. A newglut
occurs and the industrial countries are
compelled to pour the
goods they manufacture into all the non-European and uncivi
lized portions of the globe. Hence the scramble for Africa and
the railway battle in Asia Minor and China. The world had be
come too small to satisfy the greed of
European capitalism. If,
market was to be found for goods, colonies must be
therefore, a
conquered, and the ground occupied by other nations conquering
contested, for trade follows the flag And the competition was
.
the keener because the nations of

Europe possessed a surplus not
only of manufactured articles but of capital. England, France, and
Germany sought abroad a double source of profit, for their manu
facturers in the first
place, then for their investors. In the trench
ant language of an English Socialist:
Capital, like labour, has its
periods of unemployment, and its favourite method of meeting
them is emigration. . . .
Imperialism is
simply the political mani
festation of the growing tendency of capital accumulated in the
more civilized industrial countries to
export itself to the less civil-
404
ENGLAND AND GERMANY
1
ized and the less settled.
Imperialism therefore meant in the first
place war
against the uncivihzed peoples, then war between the
civilized peoples for the defence or extension of their colonial
Because the modern world was becoming indus
possessions.
trialized, it was hastening towards an inevitable war, unless that
war were anticipated by a revolution which, by overthrowing
capitalism, would destroy the evil at its roots.
This doctrine had its English defenders during the opening
years of the twentieth century. But serious flaws can be detected
in their argument. It is true that there were soldiers and sailors in
great Britain, Germany, and elsewhere who attributed the con

flict between England and Germany exclusively to economic
causes, as though eager to saddle the merchants with the respon

2
sibility for the war they were preparing.
But there is no propor
tion ^between the sufferings involved by an economic crisis and
the vast toll of sacrifice war exacts from the combatants. Surely
there were many expedients which industry might employ before
having recourse to so desperate a remedy. Moreover, the Tariff
Reformers tried to create alarm by pointing to the continual en
croachment of German trade. But the majority of the nation
turned a deaf ear to their propaganda, and by associating their
cause with militarism they rather damaged the latter than ad
vanced the former and made free-traders incredulous of the immi
nent possibility of war. Conditions had indeed been more
favourable to their propaganda at the close of the nineteenth cen
tury when a depression in trade gave birth to Williams slogan
s
1
H. N. Brailsford, The War of Steel and Cold. A
Study of Armed Peace, 1914, p. 79-
*
Commerce isthe leading idea and first interest of the modern state and so soon as a
government is faced by the alternative of seeing some millions of workers lose their liveli
hood through unemployment or of losing a few thousand lives in battle, it will quickly
know how to decide. (General Sir Ian Hamilton, Compulsory Service . . .
1911, pp. 46-7.)
Admiral von Tirpitz to Prince von Billow, February 28, 1907: It is incontestable that the
is due predominantly to our econo-
political friction between Great Britain and ourselves
mic success and the more extensive demands of a growing population. The City of Lon
don is well aware of the increasing importance of German commerce and industry. Since
British policy is almost wholly determined by the interests of the city the decision between
war and peace depends in the last resort on the attitude of the great commercial magnates.
(Die Grosse Politik vol. xxiii11 p. 35.) Cf. General Jacobi s report to William II, Feb
. . . ,
ruary 29, 1908, of a conversation with the Russian general Roedinger. (Die Grosse Politik
p. 342), also an article by Marschall von SchliefFen. DerRreig
11
. vol. xxv
. . ,
in der Gegen-
wart (Deutsche Revue, January 1909; Gesammelte Schriften, vol. i, pp. 20-1). See on the other
hand the brochure, entitled England und Deutschland in which in 1908 Schultze-Gavernitz
explains the rivalry between England and Germany
which is leading them to an inevitable
war exclusively by economic causes. Schultze-Gavernitz was. not a soldier. But it would
not, we think, be easy to find a single economist or representative of commercial
circles
in England who expressed this point of view.
405
Made in Germany was then that England had contem
yet it
plated an alliance with her most formidable competitor

in the
world market. Now, on the contrary, trade was prosperous.
After a slight setback in 1907once more advanced rapidly both
it
in England and in Germany and in England perhaps even

more rapidly than in Germany. 1 Between 1909 and 1913 though
the population of Germany was much larger and was increas
ing more quickly than the British, British imports
rose by
.144,000,000, German by .91,000,000, British exports by

.147,000,000 (.165,000,000 if we include re-exports), German
only by .152,000,000. In Europe, German trade was growing
at the expense of British. But within the Empire British trade
was more than making up the lost ground and everywhere else
an equal balance was maintained between the two countries
which were advancing at the same rate. Was this the moment to
raise the alarm?
In support of their thesis the Socialists appealed to the policy of
armaments. But their argument on this point should perhaps be
regarded as a particularly unfortunate application of their funda
mental thesis. To argue that capitalism is the source of war be
cause it has an interest in the wholesale manufacture of guns and
ironclads is to view the question from a very restricted angle.
Even if this particular contention were correct, it applied only to
the iron and steel manufacture. Surely the cotton, woollen, coal,
and in so far as the mercantile marine was concerned, the ship
building industries had other interests. Nowhere in England had
Germany more friends than in Lancashire. It was on the coast of
the North Sea where a bombardment or the landing of an armed
force was feared thatGermany was an object of alarm and her
commercial agents were dreaded, not because they damaged
British industry but because they were regarded as officers in dis
guise. And even in the steel industry we do not observe any very
profound hatred of Germany. Sheffield fraternized with Essen
and every year Krupp visited England to discuss business with his
Yorkshire friends. The position was not different on the Contin
ent where at the beginning of 1909 Essen entered into an agree
ment with Le Creusot for the joint exploitation of the mineral
wealth of Northern Africa. The agreement, it is true, proved
abortive but this was because it was wrecked by the opposition,
1 I
Bemadotte E. Schmitt, England and Germany 1 74Q-1914, 1916, pp. 96 sqq.
406
ENGLAND AND GERMANY
sentimental not economic, of French patriotism and Socialism.
Is it really true that capitalism spells war? Would it not be nearer
the truth to borrow another formula from Socialist ideology irre

concilable with the thesis we are discussing and say that capitalism
has no nationality? And may we not draw the conclusion that it
1
is a force which makes for
peace?
This precisely was the contention of a small book more lucid

than profound but captivatingly written by an English man of
business who like so many business men before him was an
amateur economist. It was first published just before the Election
of January 1910 under the tide Europe s Optical Illusion and a
second edition which appeared a year later bore the slightly
altered tide which became famous, The Great Illusion* The argu
ments of its author, Norman Angell, based on a study of banking
rather than industrial capitalism and on the machinery of exchange
and credit rather than on the machinery of production, led to the
conclusion that the optical illusion from which Europe was
suffering, the great illusion was the belief that war could ever
be a source of profit. This might have been possible when one
man could become another man s property and the victorious
state could enslave the citizens of the defeated state and make
them work for it. But the position had completely changed since
the only normal economic relation between individuals and
nations had become one of exchange. Suppose the victorious
country annexed the conquered. Then the individual inhabitants
of that country would become more dangerous competitors than
before of the citizens of the victorious country because no longer
1 Count von Metternich to Prince von

Biilow, May 4, 1906: It is a consoling sign that
in the very quarter where competition might have been expected to have produced a
natural hostility the wish for friendly relations is strongest. In the course of the winter I
have often come into contact with prominent representatives of British industry and
commerce and have always found a genuine wish that Germany and England might re
main on excellent terms with each other/ (Die Grosse Politik . . vol. xxiu , p. 425.) *It was
.
the great commercial centres of Great Britain that were most pacific and least anti-German
up to the very outbreak of the Great War. (Viscount Grey of Fallodon, Twenty-Jive Years,
i892-i9i6, vol. i, p. 134.)
3
Europe s Optical Illusion, November 1909, reprinted in April and June 1910 The Great
Illusion.A Study of the Relation of Military Power in Nations to their Economic and
Social Advantages, November 1910.
407
divided from them by a political frontier. Suppose the conqueror
were content with imposing an indemnity upon the conquered
people. The consequent influx of gold into the victorious country
would produce a general rise in prices, and thus render more for
midable the economic competition of the defeated country which
paid the indemnity. Would it
be argued that the causes of war
were not economic but movements of feeling inaccessible to
financial considerations? History proved that societies of the
military type had been steadily losing their ascendancy, that as

mankind becomes civilized it becomes commercialized, and that,
like wars of religion or duelling, wars between nations are being
rendered obsolete by the growth of enlightenment.
The success which The Great Illusion enjoyed throughout the
entire world well known. Within a year of publication, it had
is
been translated into eleven languages. In England, with which

alone we are here concerned, it made a profound impression.
Nothing short of a school grew up around it, among the Cam
circles at Man
bridge undergraduates first, then in commercial
chester, then at all the universities and in all the industrial centres
of the United Kingdom. Finally, there were no less than forty
study circles, centred round an institution called
from the name
of the patron who financed it: The Garton Foundation for Pro
1
moting the Study of International Policy. And indeed, apart
from die intrinsic merits of the book, its success is not difficult to
explain. For that other ideology
which explained war as due to
the economic structure of the modern world was at once too
revolutionary and too pessimistic to appeal to the British public.
Since it represented war as one of the evils inherent in a capitalist
Society it left only the choice between war and a revolt
of the
working class, and Englishmen, even Englishmen of Socialist sym
pathies, disliked both. And it conflicted

with the deep-seated con
viction of business men who, whatever might be said in Germany,
knew that they desired not war but peace. Norman AngelTs
philosophy, on the. contrary, suited perfectly the Radical
free
traders who, threatened after their victory at the 1906 Election by
1
LordEsher La Guerre etLa Paix auelquesfacteurs nouveaux de lapolitique Internationale,*
a speech delivered at the Sorbonne, March 27, 1914. (The Influence of King Edward and
other Essays, 1915, pp. 229 sqq.; see especially pp. 237-8.) Norman Angell the Foundations
of International Policy, 1914, pp. 194 sqq., 220 sqq. King Edward who was not much of a
reader read Norman AngelTs book and was attracted by his brilliant and clear reasoning
(LordEsher, iv, p. 55).
408
ENGLAND ANP GERMANY
the double counter-offensive of the militarists and the tariff refor
mers, were delighted to meet with a popular book which justified
and their hatred of a policy of armaments.
their belief in free trade
Moreover, at the same moment Lloyd George s great Budget
had brought home to the wealthy class which constituted the
shock troops of the Unionist party the heavy cost not only of war
but even of preparation for it. Even Sir Edward Grey s imperialist
convictions would seem to have been shaken. Anxious for the
fate of European civilization if this tremendous expenditure goes
on we find him in 1911 refusing to believe war possible: I think
it is much more
likely that the burden will be dissipated by inter
nal revolution, by the revolt of the masses of men against taxa
tion/ 1
This pacifist movement, and the movement inseparable from it

in favour of a better understanding with Germany which came
to birth after the Tangier episode and had never altogether
ceased was now gaining a new strength, marked by the founda
tion of societies, the publication of magazines, and the exchange
of visits between British and German members of Protestant
religious bodies, British and German journalists, and the munici
palities
of large towns in Great Britain and Germany. But had it
struck deep roots ? In the first place, among the leaders of the
movement we notice a disquietingly large proportion of German
or German Jewish names. Sir Max Waechter was advocating a
European federation against America which would include
England and Germany. Lucien Wolf urged as a reply to the
2
raising of the French tariff the conclusion of a commercial treaty

between England and Germany. Sir John Brunner of the great
chemical firm, Mond-Brunner, was President of the National
Liberal Federation. Sir Alfred Mond of the same firm directed
the Westminster Gazette. Sir Edgar Speyer, who controlled the
underground railways of London, was intimate both with Asquith
1 H. of C., March 13, 1911 (Parliamentary Debates, Commons 1911, vol. xxii, p. 1985).
2
Max Waechter, European Federation. A Lecture delivered at the London Institution on
Sir
the 25th February; 1909. See also on Sir Max Waechter s project an article in the Economist
for October 12, 1907; Sir Max Waechter was one of the Vice-Presidents of the Tariff
Reform League alsoContemporary Review, November 1912 (vol. cii, pp. 621 sqq.). Sir
Max Waechter Federation of Europe: Is it Possible? (an article in which the writer
"The
tones down the anti-American colour of his original project).
409
FROM BOSNIA TO AGADlfc
and the German Chancellor. 1 Lord Rothschild in London and the

banker Schwabach in Berlin worked hand in hand to improve
2
relations between the two countries. Sir Ernest Cassel founded
an Anglo-German Institute to assist young Englishmen who
settled in Germany and young Germans who settled in England.
3
Whenever a meeting was to be arranged between the rulers of

England and Germany, we find Sir Ernest Cassel, the great London
financier, in communication with Albert Ballin, the great Ham
burg shipbuilder. Both were Jews and Germans by birth. Ballin
had remained faithful to his native creed and country, Cassel had
been nationalized an Englishman and converted to Catholicism.
Ballin was an intimate friend of William II, Cassel both the friend
and banker of Edward VII who, when in London, wound up
every afternoon at his whist table. All these men brought to the
4
cause of peace the far from negligible support of their influence

and brains. But they can hardly be regarded as representative of
English society.
Other influences playecf their part in the movement for peace,
of which the most important were the activities of those humani
tarian groups, religious and intellectual, which found a willing
and eloquent mouthpiece in Lloyd George. But even under a
Liberal Government we must not exaggerate their power. They
had indeed succeeded in compelling a reform in the administra
tion of the Belgian Congo. But that was because the agitation
served important financial interests and was supported by all the
commercial magnates of Liverpool, who were eager to destroy
the monopoly of a foreign country. And their violent hostility
towards Russia, which found expression in loud protests when
the King of England went to Reval and again the following year
when the Czar visited the King at Cowes, was a source of con
siderable embarrassment to the Government. But when all is said
their opposition effected nothing. The friendship between England
and Russia had more dangerous enemies in the imperialist camp
and when it was a matter of attacking the new Russian policy of
the Foreign Office Arthur Ponsonby found his ally in Lord
1 Prince von Bulow to Count von Metternich, December 25, 1908; Von Bethman-
Hollweg to Count von Metternich, February 3, 1911 (Die Grosse Politik vol. xxviii,
. . .
11
p. 37; vol. xxvii , p. 668).
1 For the details Paul H. von Schwabach, Aus meiner Akten,
of their correspondence see
1927.
3 Tlie
Times, August 17, 1911.
* For Sir Ernest Cassel see Sir Sidney Lee, King Edward VII, pp. 60 sqq. et passim.
4IO
ENGLAND AND GERMANY
Curzon. When, on the other hand, it was a question of attacking
directly the policy of armaments, we have already seen the weak
ness of the pacifist opposition. The general staffs of the British
and French armies were making joint preparations for an eventual
war with Germany. Can it be said that Parliament seriously
attempted to exercise its right of control by demanding full infor
mation on the subject? 1 The pacifists clung to the belief that the
advent of a Liberal Government would inaugurate an era of dis
armament and international peace. What had they done to prevent
the Admiralty building Dreadnoughts in constantly increasing
numbers, eight now at once? Did it mean that the instinct of
pugnacity denounced by Norman Angell as a survival of bar
,
barism, was
still
powerful even among the sincerest friends ot
peace? In a powerful novel, H. G. Wells showed how a war in
the air threatened European civilization with ruin. 2 But he played
at soldiers with his two little boys and invented new military
games for their amusement. W. T. Stead was the most vociferous

3
and the most theatrical representative of British pacifism. But he

was also one of the protagonists of the formula: two keels to one:
two English Dreadnoughts to one German. In the Cabinet Lord
Loreburn was a convinced opponent of Sir Edward Grey s
foreign policy, but he did not object to Lady Loreburn s christen
4
ing a Dreadnought. And in a book written a little later, one of
1We hear that we are under a formal obligation to assist the French armies with an
expeditionary force which would land in France in the event of an attack on France by
Germany. This open secret is the property of all in the three countries concerned who
pretend to be well informed. It has been set in black and white by the "Temps"; it has
passed uncontradicted in the French Chamber; it has received publicity on German plat
forms from an authority so competent as Herr Bassermann, die leader of the National
Liberals. It is only our own House of Commons which shows no curiosity to have it
affirmed or denied/ (The Nation, March 12, 1910, p. 903).
2
The War in the Air and particularly how Mr. Bert Smallw ays fared while it lasted, 1908.
For a general statement of H. G. Wells pre-war opinions see vol. xx of the Atlantic
Edition of his works entitled: The War in the Air and other War Forebodings.
Ûttle Wars. AGame for Boys from Twelve Years of Age to One Hundred and Fifty and
for the more Intelligent Sort of Girls who like Boys Games and Books. With an Appendix on
Kriegspiel, 1913. The book, it is true, concludes on a pacifist note. Great War is at present,
I am convinced, not only the most expensive game in the universe, but it is a game out of
all proportion. Not only are the masses of men and material and suffering and incon
venience too monstrously big for reason but the available heads we have for it are too
small (p. 100). But this does not alter the fact that Wells played the general for the enter
tainment of himself, bis children and his readers.
* The
Times, October 28, 1909. Cf. John Viscount Morley, Memorandum on Resignation,
August 1914, 1928, p. 19 : With a fleet of overwhelming power, a disinterestedness beyond
suspicion, a foreign minister of proved ability, truthfulness and self-control, when the
smoke of battlefields has cleared from our European sky, England might have expected
an influence not to be acquired by a hundred of her little Expeditionary Forces/
411
the most forcible and impeachments by an Englishman s
sincere
pen of his country policy during the years which led up to the
s
War, it is amusing to read such an unconscious relevation as the

following remark: So long as he (the author) lives he will
remember the thrill of admiration and something akin to pride
that he experienced when he viewed the Grand Fleet at Spithead
in July 1914. It was a mighty monument to the sciences and crafts
1
manship of Britain/
Nevertheless, the British public was thoroughly convinced that it

wanted peace, even if perhaps it did not always want its indispens
able conditions. Even during the naval scare attempts were made to
pour oil on the troubled waters. In September 1908 a leading

review, the Fortnightly, published an important article, unsigned,
whose anonymous author urged that an attempt should be made
to effect an Anglo-German entente. Beyond question the British
and the Germans are the two races most fitted to advance the
orderly, competent administration of the world. In fact, if they
could only divide up between them the troubled portions of the
globe there would be a good chance of firm, steady government
J. T. Walton Newbold, How Europe Armed for War (i871-19i4) t 1916, p. 76. The
1
author adds: It was a tragedy of steel cunningly designed and admirably wedded to the
fulfilment of the misdirected genius of a nation. But these words are double-dged and
what matters is the thrill of admiration and pride which runs through them. And it is
perhaps among the revolutionary writers that the most striking expressions of England s
pride in her navy are to be found. The syndicalist, Stephen Reynolds, in the preface to a
book he published in 1912 entitled, The Lower Deck. The Navy and the Nation writes as
*
follows: Of all our great public institutions I confess to being proudest of the Navy. For
it does seem to me that, whatever its
faults, the Navy is the outward and visible sign of
that which is best in the British seafaring spirit. Armaments, no doubt, are an
appalling
piece of international pigheadedness, a frightful waste of human lives and national resour
ces; yet I imagine that men of the future will look back on us and say: "Out of that barbar
ous foolishness they created, on an heroic scale, one thing that was splendid in
spite of its
defects their Navy" And I fancy that our naval history will make their blood run
faster as it makes mine. An economic waste may be in other ways a
gain.* (p. vii.) Notice
also the perplexity felt by
young Keeling, who was indeed a Fabian, not a syndicalist, but
also a convinced friend of Germany. *. . I see as
.
clearly as anything that aggressiveness
and quarrelsomeness is no earthly good it has done me no good and won t do
anyone
literally is absurd ... I am a Big Navy Man. But the spirit
else any good. Tolstoy taken
of Tolstoy and Shaw or Voltaire (each at his best) is the only tolerable outlook on life one
1
sees and feels. (To Miss To wnshend,
June 3, 1914) ; Keeling Letters and Recollections, 1918,
I am
p. 173. . . .
hesitating on the brink of taking part in Liberal politics. I think I shall; I
see what else I can do usefully in politics. I am
don^t decidedly anti-revolutionist, and I
don t believe in most of the doctrines which distinguish the LL.P. from the Liberals
the right to work, extreme anti-militarism,
Little-Navy, and Little-Englandism. (To the
Same, June 14, 1914; ibid., p. 175.)
412
ENGLAND AND GERMANY
replacing flabbiness and chaos in all quarters which cause anxiety

from time to time/ 1 The crisis which immediately followed the
annexation of Bosnia did not prevent the Liberal Press in London
and Manchester expressing its desire to see the question settled by
the joint arbitration of England and Germany. It was, to be sure,
an empty wish, for it ran directly counter to the deliberate policy
of the German Government. But the crisis had
barely been
brought to an end by Isvolsky s surrender when another important
review, the Nineteenth Century, published the answers obtained by
a journalist who had sounded several Germans in high position
with a view to discovering a basis for an entente between the two
2
countries. Their answers cannot be called encouraging. The
writer s desire for an entente is obviously far stronger than that of
his German interlocutors. Nevertheless, there existed in Germany
and even in government circles a party which began to feel alarm
at the
dangers in which their country might be involved by the
naval policy pursued during the last few years.
For we must not imagine that the diplomatic victory which
Von Biilow gained in 1909 over Isvolsky was such an unmitigated
triumph as his victory over Delcasse in 1905. His stroke at Tangier
had set the seal on his reputation for statesmanship. The episode
of Bosnia was the prelude to his downfall. He had arranged the
*
Why not an Anglo-German entente? (Fortnightly Review, September 1908, pp. 394
sqq. and 401). For the real or supposed affinities between the two peoples c Basil "Wil
liams, Anglo-German Relations* (Edinburgh Review, October 1909, No. 430, pp. 447 sqq.).
See especially p. 447: Nowhere on foreign soil have English writers and thinkers found
a readier hearing than in Germany, or those in Germany than with us. Such dose connec
tions are but natural: for we are of the same blood, and in the main of the same religion,
while in fundamental characteristics no two nations resemble one another more closely
than the English and the Germans/ See also a litde later Sir Henry H. Johnston, German
Views of an Anglo-German Understanding* (Nineteenth Century and After, December 1910,
vol. Ixviii, pp. 978 sqq.). *The Need for an Anglo-German Understanding* (ibid., January
1911, voL Ixix, pp. 82 sqq.). See especially vol. bcviii, p. 978: *Any person of average
intelligence and over, who has been enabled to visit the German Empire at the present
time, even cursorily, must be aware of the enormous progress made by the German
people in science, art, social legislation, internal communications, commerce, and the
amenities of life. And even a tourist of no quick apprehension in fact, for this purpose
the stupider the better must feel that in travelling about Germany he is more at home,
made to feel more at home, than in any other country outside the British Dominions and
the United States, for the reason that nowhere outside the lands where English is the
national speech our tongue more widely spoken than in Germany; with no race in the
is
world have we so frequently inter-married than with the Germans. And conversely on
the psychological paradox of the Anglo-French Entente see Whelpley, The Trade of the
World, 1913, p. 99. We
have called attention to all these passages to bring home to the
reader on how sincere were the sentiments they express, on the other hand
the one hand
for how little they
counted on August 4, 1914.
1
Aeneas O
Neill, Six German Opinions on the Naval Situation* (Nineteenth Century
and After, No. 339, May 1909, voL Ixv, pp. 725 sqq.).
413
former in complete harmony with his sovereign. The latter left
them at loggerheads. The Daily Telegraph incident was the occa
sion of the quarrel, but its causes lay deeper. The uneasiness with
which the Chancellor regarded the anti-English naval policy pur
sued by William II and Von Tirpitz was the greater because it
was so costly and the problem of raising the money was more
difficult for the German than for the British Government. For in
Germany there were no direct taxes which could be increased

whenever more money was needed. In consequence of the still
incomplete unification of the Empire the sources of revenue at the
disposition of the Government were inadequate. To increase them
it would be
necessary to reform the entire system of taxation and
such a reform must, according to the method adopted, offend the
rich or the poor, alternatives equally formidable. Von Billow,
therefore, at the end of 1908, was pressing prudence upon the
German Admiralty. Could they not build fewer ironclads and
more torpedo boats and submarines? Or without abandoning the
programme of 1909 as regards the number of ships to be built,
could they not build them more slowly? 1
To statesmen trained in the old school of Bismarck the position
seemed nothing short of scandalous. The war to which they must
look forward would not be a continental struggle which might
lead later to English intervention. Thanks to Tirpitz and William
n so the malcontents alleged the threat of a naval war with
England hung over Germany. The general staff of the army which
had always looked askance at the constantly increasing prestige
of the Admiralty regarded as madness a war which must be
carried on by a navy which as was known and admitted before
hand could never equal the British. What should the army do in
that case? While the British army apprehended a German landing
on the coast of Norfolk, the German army found itself compelled
to form very different plans. la the event of war with
England the
Chief of Staff would be obliged *to ask the Emperor to declare
war on France at the same time 2 .
1 Prince
von Bfilow to Admiral von Tirpitz, December 23, 1908; The Same to the
Same, January n, 1909 (Die Grosse Politik . vol. xxviii,
. .
pp. 39, 61).
*
Protocol by tie Head of the Ministry of Marine, Vice-Admiral von Miiller, reporting
a meeting held at the Chancery on June 3, 1909, from
half-past four to half-past eight/
(A. von Tirpitz, Politische Dokumente, vol. i, p. 160.) It is interesting to notice the forecasts
made by several Germans a year earlier about the time of the Reval meeting. The German
economist Schultze-Gavernitz after predicting that England would declare war on Ger
many continues: Êngland s naval victories would perhaps be compensated by the defeat
414
ENGLAND AND GERMANY
But before adopting such extreme measures, might not Ger
many take advantage of the favourable opportunity presented
by her recent successes in the Balkans, and her agreement with
France about Morocco to make new proposals to England such
as would not be derogatory to German prestige? Von Biilow
summoned the Ambassador Metternich to a Cabinet council held
on June meet Tirpitz, Von Moltke, Von Schon, Bethmann-
3 to
Hollweg, and Von Miiller. He sketched an entire programme of

reconciliation, a colonial agreement, a pact of neutrality with
England, and an abatement of the naval competition. He fell
from power, overthrown, for the first time in the history of the
German Empire, by a majority in the Reichstag. He was replaced
by Bethmann-Hollweg who immediately adopted his predeces
sor s policy. Negotiations were begun between the two Govern
ments and dragged on very slowly for two years. The Emperor,
though extremely sceptical, indeed almost hostile, did not refuse
1
his consent.
of France on land. An unsuccessful naval war would necessarily force Germany to adopt *
Napoleon s policy which, is far from her present intention* and he adds: Would it be
possible to strike England a blow on landfor example by allying
ourselves with the
Moslem world? In any event such a war (between Germany and England) which many
of our jingoes regard as a naval war easily despatched would usher in a period of general
and long-drawn conflict/ (Dr. von Schultze-Gavemitz, England und Deutschland. Zweite
erweit&te Auflage der Festschrift zur Geburtstag Seiner Koniglichen Hoheit des Grossherzog von
Baden, am 9 Juli, 1907, 1908.) And the head of the Admiralty von Miiller wrote to von
Tirpitz on August 31, 1908: It is easy to say, "better a world
war than dishonourable
peace* . But what aspect will this world war assume ? What
main objectives will it pursue?
Will it spread from France to England, or will its theatre be the East? Have we sufficient
naval strength, our leaders being the men they are, even to contemplate tasks of such a
Napoleonic magnitude, not to speak of achieving them? To answer such questions
is a
very serious responsibility/ (A. von Tirpitz, Politische Dokumente, vol. i, p. 85.)
Is it
credible that no echo of these speculations, reached England? As early as 1907 Austin
Harrison wrote: AU the loose talk of war amounts, in fact, to this: if ever we have friction
4
with Germany, France will be made to foot the bill The French know it; all German
France within
diplomacy is based upon it. In the event of hostilities, Germany will invade
a. few hours of the declaration of war, directly through Belgium. Nor can there be any
question that all her military plans of invasion are drawn up

with that intention. The
British Fleet, Germans say, may destroy our Navy if they can get at it but we shall be
in Paris in a short time; and the price of peace will be some ,750,000,000 and the entire
French Navy, to say nothing of ports, and forts, another useful accessory/ (England and
Germany, p. 169.)
1 For these
negotiations see British Documents . . . vol. vi, pp. 283 sqq.; and Die Grosse
Politik . . . voL xxviii, pp. 199 sqq.
415
6
The ultimate and avowed object of these negotiations was to
put an end to the naval competition which threatened to ruin both

nations without benefiting either. But as soon as the position was
stated in these terms it was England s turn to make demands.
Either she simply asked for an assurance that the German Naval
Law of 1900 would not be reinforced by a further law before 1920
when the entire programme would be completed for example,
in 1912, the critical year after which, if the law of 1900 were
strictly carried out, Germany would lay down only two Dread
noughts a year instead of four. Or she suggested ingenious devices
by which Germany could reduce her naval expenditure without
violating the provisions of the law of 1900, for example, by build
ing more slowly or by building smaller vessels.
To these proposals the German negotiators returned an evasive
answer. The fleet for whose construction within twenty years the
law of 1900 made provision was not specially directed against
England. Itwas regarded by the German Admiralty as strictly
proportionate to the present position of German commerce and
the strength of her mercantile marine. If the German Government
were to accept a smaller navy, it must be in return for some ade
quate compensation for example, the conclusion of a political
agreement between the two Powers. It was this request for an
agreement which Bethmann-Hollweg, on this point obeying the
Emperor s
express wish, persisted in pushing to the front, whereas
the British kept the limitation of armaments in the
foreground.
Already when Billow was Chancellor three alternative proposals
had been prepared by the German Foreign Office, a
proposal for
a regular alliance, a proposal for a
pact of neutrality, and a vaguer
proposal for an entente. At the close of 1909 it was the pact of
neutrality that was suggested. England was to promise benevolent
neutrality towards Germany, and Germany reciprocally towards
whatever the conflict in which either
England power might en
gage. Sir Edward Grey, and this no doubt was what William n
intended, found the proposal extremely embarrassing.
How indeed could he admit that the entente with France made
any alliance or quasi-alliance with Germany impossible ? And how
could he conclude even a pact of
neutrality when the General
Staffs of England and France were
concocting the best means to
416
ENGLAND AND GERMANY
protect the North of France in the event of a German invasion?

He evaded the issue by replying that neither the Anglo-French nor
the Anglo-Russian entente contained such a guarantee of neutral
ity, comprised
indeed no provisions other than those by which the
powers concerned England and France, England and Russia
settled amicably individual questions in dispute between them.
Why not therefore conclude a simple colonial agreement between
England and Germany? On the question of Bagdad and the Per
sian railways a settlement could surely be reached. To this the
German Government raised no objection: before his fall, von
Biilow had contemplated such a colonial agreement. But it insis
ted on the primary importance of a political pact. Sir Edward
Grey was not prepared to meet this repeated demand by a blunt
refusal but sought to find a formula which would satisfy Germany
without losing the friendship of France and Russia. What could
it be? He
explained bis views on the matter to the colonial dele
gates when in May 1911 the Imperial Conference once more met
in London. The entente must be public. It must not put us back
into the old bad relations with France and Russia*. And it must be
of such a nature that there is no chance of a disturbance of the
1
peace between Germany and France or Germany and Russia .
In short, it was to be such an understanding as the temper of the

Continental powers made impossible. Did not Sir Edward know
this? In May 1911 the conversations had already been suspended
for several months.
The conversations had been secret, as also was Sir Edward
Grey statement to the Imperial Conference. Nevertheless, the
s
mere were begun and continued so long is a proof

fact that they
that the feeling of the public towards Germany was not so hostile
as it had been during the diplomatic crisis which followed the
annexation of Bosnia.The struggle over the Budget, and the con
flictbetween the Upper and Lower Houses of Parliament had
contributed largely to this change of feeling. Public attention
1 H. H. Asquith, The Genesis of War, 1923, p. 124. Cf. Sir Edward Grey to Sir E.
Goschen, September 1, 1909: There is nothing in our agreements with France and Russia
which is directed against Germany and therefore nothing to bar a friendly arrangement
with Germany. ... I want a good understanding with Germany, but it must be one
which will not impoverish those which we have with France and Russia I should have
thought some formula could be found to which they also could be parties; that would be
the best and most reassuring solution, though I see that the French could not be a party to
anything which looked like confirming the loss of Alsace and Lorraine/ (British Documents
. .voL v, pp. 803-4.)
417
was elsewhere. And other circumstances favoured if not an
entente it least a relaxation of tension between
England and
Germany.
In the first
place there was King Edward s death. His influence
British foreign as we have already
upon policy, emphasized, was
slight. It could have been as important as it is sometimes repre
sented, there could have existed that policy of Kifcg Edward*
which legend depicts, only if the King had been a greater man
than he was, and he would have found himself
compelled to over
ride the opposition of
public opinion as expressed by the Press,
by his Parliament, by his ministers and by the civil service. 1 There
were, however, two and only two occasions on which up to a
point he had insisted on having his own way. When he decided
to visit Paris in 1903 he had to overcome the
scruples of his minis
ters who were afraid that it
might be the occasion for hostile
manifestations which might imperil the understanding with
France they were trying to achieve. And when he decided to visit
Reval in 1908 he was obliged to defy the
noisy opposition of the
Radicals who thought it
disgraceful that the King of England, by
visiting the Czar for the first time in history, should appear to
condone the sanguinary repression of the revolution. But on both
occasions the policy which these visits furthered was the
policy
of the Foreign Office, the
Admiralty, and the War Office and a
policy supported by the great bulk of the Press. These and all the
other visits he made,
accompanied by Sir Charles Hardinge, were
simply the visits of an ambassador more mobile and more splen-
*
outside the British
?&* popular idea, Isles, King Edward moulded the
that
foreign policy of his country, is of course pure illusion. Once or twice in a
century, the
policy of a great nation is determined by the throne or by the action of a statesman. Such
men were Cavour and Bismarck. But as a rule the force that drives one nation towards
umty, another towards revolution and another towards expansion, comes from the neces
sity of the people influenced by the conditions under which it is *
striving for existence
(Lord Esher, The Influence of King Edward and Essays on other
Subjects, 1915, p. 50 ) Lord
Esher who held an important
position at court had been one of the most active agents in
tanging about the rapprochement between England and France. In the article from which
the passage just
quoted has been taken and which shortly after the death of
Edward VH the Deutsche Revue and which was appearedsubmitted
m to King George
probably
before
before publication it is also of interest to notice a
passage in which Lord Esher expresses
the wish that the Anglo-French
O ~ ---- ^m.tm, m^j.j.1. be
entente might i_?v transformed
u-ajj.jj-vjiuj.tu. 1UIU
into a triple
^ entente between
DCLWCCn
i
LXlpIC cTIfCTWc
d.
toGomany,
TJÎ^^?* and Fcance
Ranee îbid.
bid p 53 ^* See frrtker
.
* . further on the influence exercised
by
King Edrad on foreign poEcy the judicious remarks of Jacques Bardoux Victoria I
TT-"
Eocxuard VIE, Georges V/ pp. 230 sqq.

418
ENGLAND AND GERMANY
did than the rest but also perhaps more anxious to obey exactly
the instructions of his Foreign Minister. Nor were these Royal
journeys so consistently anti-German as they are often represen

ted. The visit to Cronberg was not a deliberate slight on William
II though the latter chose to regard it as such. And the visit to
Berlin in January 1909 six months after Cronberg and three

months after the Daily Telegraph incident, was an advance made
to the German nation as well as to its Emperor. It would seem that
on the occasion of this visit William II had the satisfaction of hear
ing his uncle express approval of his policy of naval construction
and disavow the campaign the British Press was conducting
against it. On the other hand, we must remember that these
1
visits an innovation in British diplomacy gave the policy of

the Foreign Office such a dramatic embodiment that the growth
of the legend is easy to understand. And it is not surprising that
William II in particular should have regarded them as hostile acts
or rather as encroachments upon his own province. For he had
been the creator of the part. For a long time his journeys had
focused the attention of the world. But now accounts of the
coinings and goings of another monarch filled the European
Press. The King of the great rival nation visited all the rulers in
Europe including the one whom William was not allowed to visit.
It was intolerable, and Edward VTTs death relieved the Em
peror s
vanity, so often hurt on a particularly tender spot since his
uncle s accession to the British throne. Moreover, he came to
London for the King s funeral and the emotion he displayed was
not a mere formality. The son of an English woman, England was,
after all, in many respects his second fatherland. At Windsor at
Buckingham Palace, memories of childhood and youth thronged

thick about him. He was delighted to witness among a people
whom the German Press had depicted as consumed by the fever
of revolution the grave bearing, the respect, and the genuine
sorrow with which tens of thousands of his subjects watched the
funeral of their monarch. And since the London crowd trans
ferred to him something of the emotion it felt in the presence of
King Edward s coffin, before he left England something not un
like a reconciliation had been effected between the British people
and the German Emperor.
Szogyeny. Despatch from Berlin, February 17, 1909 (Osterreich-Ungarns Aussenpolitik

35).
.
419
The new King was more pronounced Conservative than his
a
father and, as we should expect from an old sailor, more directly
concerned at the growth of the German fleet than die clubman he
succeeded.
But, on the other hand, he can hardly have failed to entertain
towards imperial Germany those mingled sentiments of esteem
and dislike felt by the entire British aristocracy and by all the
officers in high command, and the English ruling class had come
to the conclusion that for the moment at least their esteem was
greater than their dislike. The naval attache at Berlin whose
reports were believed to have embittered the relations between
England and Germany was replaced by another charged to create
a more friendly atmosphere. Admiral Jellicoe visited Germany
and made himself pleasant and popular. In England the domestic
situation had become too serious for the Conservatives even to
think of attempting to divert the voter s attention by reviving
the German peril when in December they were again summoned
to the poll. And two months later both McKenna and Sir Edward
Grey speaking in the House of Commons on the navy estimates

used language calculated to give satisfaction to German opinion.
McKenna, as First Lord of the Admiralty, discovered that

England had exaggerated the speed of German naval construction.
The German Government had spoken the truth when it made
diplomatic protests against the miscalculations of the British
Admiralty. It had been given out that by March 1911 Germany
would possess nine Dreadnoughts as against England s twelve.
In fact, she possessed
only five. Did that mean that all the recent
expenditure on Dreadnoughts, eight in 1909, five in 1910, and

this year five more, had been money wasted? Not at all: for even
at this rate of construction, to look a few years ahead, the Two-
Power Standard could not be maintained. Liberal ministers began
once more to give the formula a more moderate interpretation.
*
McKenna asked for a fleet that was Supreme as against any
foreign navy, and as against any reasonable probable combination
which we might have to meet single-handed and Sir Edward ,
Grey also declared in so many words that the American navy

420
ENGLAND AND GERMANY
must not be taken into account, and-that lie would be satisfied
with a fleet sufficient to hold the sea against any reasonably prob
1
able combination It was an empty formula at a time when
.
England had no coalition of hostile navies to fear. It meant, in

fact, a fleet superior to the German fleet by itself. And what degree
of superiority would suffice? The special effort now being made
would give England in 1913 thirty large ironclads to twenty-one
German. Not two keels to one but almost three keels to two. It
was the formula which in 1908 Lloyd George had championed
against the formula of the party
in favour of large armaments2
and the Wilhelmstrasse interpreted Sk Edward Grey speech as s
a surrender. If four years ago*, the Emperor remarked, we had

taken the advice of Metternich and von Biilow and ceased to
build, we should be Copenhagened now You see how our deter !
mination is respected and how they are obliged to submit to hard

3
facts. Let us go on then quietly building.
In May, William n paid another visit to London. The occasion
of his visit, which was a family affair (Sir Edward.Grey seems to
have eluded all his attempts to discuss politics) 4 was the opening
of the monument to Queen Victoria, grandmother both of the
German Emperor and the English King. The spectacle Europe
to flatter his pride. He saw
presented to his eyes was calculated
England stripped of the bulwark the Upper House had presented
the demands of the labour, and the Irish. He saw
against pacifists,
in France: a strike of office employees had
anarchy spreading post
been followed by a strike of railwaymen, and the strike of vine
dressers which had assumed such formidable proportions in the
South two years before was prolonged in Champagne by dis
orders in which German agents provacateurs had a hand. In 1909
Russia had shown the world how weak she had been left by the
combined disasters of the war and revolution, and the two
Emperors were drawn together by their common fear of popular
insurrection. William did not want war. Never had the ruler of
a powerful state while employing so freely the language of war,
1
H. of C., March 13, 1911 (Parliamentary Debates, 1911 Commons, 5th Series, vol. xxii,
pp. 1916, 1979).
* Prince von Metternich to Chancellor von Btilow,
August i, 1908 (Die Grosse Politik
. VOL 30QV, pp. 1 1 3-14)
. .
Note to a despatch from the naval attache* in London to the German Admiralty,
3
March 14, 1911 (von Tirpitz, Politische Dokumente, vol. i, p. 189).

4
Szogyeny s despatch from Berlin, January 19, 1912 (Osterreich-Ungarns Aussenpolitik
, . . vol. iii, p. 778).
421
reality.. He disapproved of the pan-German agita
so dreaded its-
tion which was becoming increasingly vocal. Though in the

bottom of his heart he may have sympathized with its aims, he
found fault with its impatience. He cherished the hope that the
day would come when his navy would intimidate England as the
German army had intimidated France since 1871. When it arrived
a German statesman might perhaps risk the decisive venture. 1
But this was nothing more than a vague dream whose accomplish
ment he was glad to believe would be remote. The speeches
delivered in March by Sir Edward Grey and McKenna, the cor
dial welcome he received when he visited London
unofficially
with his wife and two of his sons, and the information he received
from all quarters confirmed him in his belief and he was de
lighted to have it confirmed that peace was secure.
If peace was secure, the moment was
perhaps favourable to
make England a gesture of friendship. Not indeed of the kind dear
to humanitarian Liberalism. When the American Government
invited the three Governments of England, France, and
Germany
to conclude general treaties of arbitration, the
proposal, gladly
accepted by lie French and British Governments, had been rejec
ted by William, and to any protests that might be raised he was in
a position to reply that at that very moment the House of Lords,
after much
procrastination, was rejecting the Declaration of
London, thereby nullifying all the work accomplished at the
Second Hague Conference. If however peace were really assured
how could the negotiations begun in 1909 between
Grey and
Bethmann-Hollweg, be allowed to break down finally? In the
matter of a reduction of armaments which
Germany could not
accept, and in the matter of a pact of neutrality which England
1 See a curious
article in the Allgemeine
Evangelische Lutherische Kirchenzeitung written
in November 1908 to justify the interview published by the Daily Telegraph and which
probably expresses the views current in the Emperor s immediate entourage: "The
Emperor is doing his best to secure the friendship of Great Britain. This is not very honour
able for us but is necessary so
long as we are obliged to avoid war with England because we are
not yet sufficiently strong to risk it It is only a short time since the German
people under
stood our need of an adequate navy. And we -must
go on improving it and competing
with England until if she still possesses three times as
many vessels as we she will be unable
to find the sailors to man them. Until that
day to agitate for war is sheer lunacy. The
mischief of which our Press has been
guilty in this connection, the Emperor is striving to
undo: (Quoted by Ed. Bernstein, Die
Englische Gefahr und das deutsche Volk, 1911, p. 20.)
For the dreams of a naval war in which the Kaiser liked to
indulge see the report of inter
views given in Berlin between February 22 and 25, 1910
by William n and The Chancellor,
Betiunann-Hollweg. Abbazia March 6, 1910 (Gsterreich-Ungams Aussenpolitik . . . vol. ii,
pp. 724 sqq.).
422
ENGLAND AND GERMANY
could not accept, agreement was impossible. But Sir Edward
Grey had again put forward the suggestion of an exchange of
information between the respective Admiralties. In both coun
tries competition had been increased by mutual
suspicion of bad
faith; the statements made to their respective Parliaments by the
British and German ministers as to the actual state of naval con
struction were regarded in the other country as mendacious.
Would it not be possible to allow the naval attaches under certain
definite conditions to visit the dockyards and see for themselves
the exact number, size, and equipment of the vessels being built?
To a British note ofJune i, Bethmann-Hollweg returned a favour
able reply on the 27th. For the first time he communicated to
Tirpitz the conversations between the two countries, and asked

him to prepare for negotiations with the technical experts of the
British Admiralty. But the German note of June 27 received no
1
reply. For on July i England, while still plunged in domestic s
strife, found herself taken unawares by a new Moroccan crisis,

Franco-German and Anglo-German, more serious than any pre
ceding crisis had been.
When the summer of 1911 opened, it was evident that the

Moroccan agreement concluded between France and Germany
in February 1909 was doomed to remain ineffective. It met with
too much opposition in Morocco itself, where the French and
Germans refused to be reconciled, in France, where it was un
popular alike with the Socialists and the Nationalists and in
2
England, where it interfered with too many private interests.
Moreover its phraseology was ambiguous. It was very quickly
discovered that in many spheres, the railways for example, any
formula of economic collaboration which did not involve some
administrative or political condominium was not easy to discover.
Nor was it easy to apply an instrument which recognized that
France possessed special political interests throughout the whole
of Morocco and at the same time maintained the inviolability of
the Algeciras pact which denied that any European power, least
1 voL
British Documents . . . voL vii, pp. 636 sqq. Die Grosse Politik . . . xxviii, pp. 4.02
sqq.
a Andr Tardieu, Le Mysore XAgafcr, p. 79. >-79.
423
of France, possessed special political rights in Morocco. In
all
May the French Government made use of this German recogni

tion of her privileged position to despatch a punitive expedition
to Fez. The Spanish Government, anxious to safeguard the secret
clauses of the 1904 agreement, occupied El-Ksar which was
situated within the which they assigned to her. The
territory
German Government which had protested from
the first against
the despatch of the French expedition to Fez as a violation of the
pact of Algeciras now regarded
it as definitively condemned.
While conversations were in progress between the German and

French Governments as to the of permitting a French
possibility
occupation of the country in return for adequate compensations,
the German Government despatched on July I a small warship,
the Panther, which was followed shortly by a larger vessel, to the
for the step was
port of Agadir in Southern Morocco. The pretext
the protection of German interests in the district. The true motive
was to compel negotiations between the three powers France,
Germany, and England for a new settlement of the Moroccan
1
question on the ruins of the Algeciras pact.
The German step was calculated to annoy the British Govern
ment, thus deliberately ignored. But it was embarrassed by
domestic difficulties. The coronation had brought about a truce
in the struggle between the Commons and the Lords. In a few
days the conflict would be resumed. And it had not even effected
a
truce in an even more serious social struggle, a general strike of
seamen and dockers which, aggravated by outbreaks of rioting,
had since June brought the work of all the ports to a standstill. In
France, the political situation was more chaotic than ever. Since
Clemenceau s fall and the election of 1910 the disintegration of
parties and the instability of cabinets had reached
a climax. Only
a week before the Germans despatched the battleship to Agadir,
a new cabinet had confronted the Chamber. Of the Prime Minis
ter, Joseph Caillaux, who had never before been President of the
Council, nothing was known except that as Minister of Finance

he had pursued for several months with but slight success a policy
1
crisis see Die Grosse Politik . . . vol. xxix, pp. 137 sqq. British Documents
For the Agadir
. vol. vii, pp. 173 sqq. Le Myst&e d Agadir by Andre Tardieu though die work of a parti
. .
san and deprived to a certain extent of its documentary value by subsequent publications
is still worth consulting. We must however add that on the question with which we are
specially concerned, England s attitude during the second half of 1911, the author is com
pletely silent.
424
ENGLAND AND GERMANY
of economic rapprochement with Germany. At the Foreign Office,
de Selves was a political tiro who was not only for the first time
Minister for Foreign Affairs but for the first time a Cabinet
minister* There could be no doubt that the German Govern
ment hoped to take advantage of the obvious weakness of both
Governments to punish France for the audacity of her expe
dition to Fez and England for having made common cause with
France for several years. But what exactly was her aim? By
making a landing at Agadir to drive England and France into
war? Or simply to occupy Southern Morocco and defy France
and England to treat the occupation as a casus lellil Or to compel
France by the threat of occupying part of Morocco to make
elsewhere? And were these concessions to
territorial concessions
be extensive and humiliating for France? Or on the contrary so
moderate that they would satisfy France and eventually detach
her from England? If that were Germany s intention, her stroke
at Agadir was the worst possible inauguration of such a policy.
It aroused toomuch anger in France, too much greed in Germany.
It is however probable that the German Government, at variance
with was not its own aims. It
itself, clear as to simply intended to
derive whatever advantage it could from its action at Agadir now
that the step had been taken, committing itself and Europe to
the mercy of events.
10
"Without loss of time the Quai d Orsay charged its ambassador

in London to propose a joint naval demonstration by France and
England in reply to the German, and at first before he had con

sulted his colleagues, Sir Edward Grey favoured the suggestion.
But at a meeting held on July 4, the Cabinet refused to consider
1
the immediate despatch of a British man-of-war to Agadir, and
was content to demand that England should be kept informed of
the negotiations which should not, as Germany proposed, be con
fined to three powers, France, Spain and herself. Four powers,
1
Is there any reason to think that Kong George exercised his personal influence in the
same -direction? See Metternich to Bethmann-Hollweg, September 25, 1911 (report of a

conversation with the King at Balmoral) The King, while lamenting the position, ob
served that as a result of the grouping of the Powers (which he dislikes intensely) England
was obliged to support France. But he had at least prevented the despatch of a British
man-of-war to Agadir which would probably have led to war/ (Die Grosse Politik . ..
vol. xxix, p. 245.)
425
France, Germany, Spain and England must take part in any settle
ment. On July 6 Asquith, speaking in the House of Commons,
simply stated in general terms but in accents of gravity that as
regards the question which had just arisen in Morocco and for
which he hoped diplomacy would discover a peaceful solution,
England in the possible event of future developments affecting
her interests more directly would adopt the attitude dictated by a
due regard to the protection of those interests and to the fulfil
ment of our treaty obligations to France 1 As for the French .
Government, the very day on which the British Cabinet refused

to send a battleship to Morocco Joseph Caillaux, temporarily in
charge of the Foreign Office, energetically opposed the despatch

of a French man-of-war. On this point, therefore, he was in
agreement with Sir Edward Grey. But there the agreement ended.
For Caillaux proposed to Berlin that negotiations- should take
place not between three powers as Germany had originally sugges
ted, or between four as England demanded, but between two
alone, France and Germany, for the amicable settlement of all
questions in dispute between the two countries outside Europe.
But he refused to put forward any definite proposals, waiting for
Germany to make them.
They were made about the middle ofJuly. Kiderlen-Wachter,
the German Foreign Minister, offered France a firee hand in
Morocco and was even willing to consider the cession of Togo, if
in return France would hand over to Germany her entire
colony
in the Congo. These
proposals were revealed to the public by an
article which
appeared in the Matin, followed on July 20 by an
article in The Times. It was
easy to exploit these revelations
against Germany. For, on the one hand, when England seven
years earlier had given France a free hand in Morocco, she had
asked for no territory in return but simply for the abandonment
of certain rights. On the other hand, a right of pre-emption on
the Belgian Congo was attached to the French colony. Would
Germany receive this as well? Finally, though detailed informa
tion was
lacking, the whole world knew of the agreement con
cluded twelve or thirteen years before between England and
Germany by which the latter was given certain rather indefinite
rights over the Portuguese colonies to the south of the Belgian
Congo. It was evident that Germany intended to build up a vast
1
Parliamentary Debates, Commons 1911, 5th Series, vol. xxvii, p. 1341.
426
ENGLAND AND GERMANY
colonial empire in equatorial Africa. France was to give her what
she wanted, and England to abstain from interference. Otherwise
Germany would land troops at Agadir. And the British Govern

ment had been kept in complete ignorance of these proposals; the
only information it had received had come from the Press. On
July 21 Lloyd George, the guest of honour at a banquet of city
financiers, speaking as the mouthpiece of the Cabinet made a
formal protest against the attitude of the German Government.
If a situation were to be forced upon us in which peace could only
be preserved by the surrender of the great and beneficent position
Britain has won by centuries of heroism and achievement, by
allowing Britain to be treated where her interests were vitally
affected as if she were of no account in the Cabinet of Nations,
then I say emphatically that peace at that price could be a humilia
tion, intolerable for a great country like ours to endure. National
1
honour is no party question/
ii
Thus the great demagogue, the arch-enemy of a costly pro

gramme of naval expenditure, and the leading champion of a
rapprochement between England and Germany, came forward in
opposition to Germany as die mouthpiece of British patriotism and
imperialism. On the Continent the speech made a profound
effect in Germany was to irritate rather
impression. But its first
than intimidate. On the 25th the Ambassador,

Metternich, made
strong representations to Sir Edward Grey about a speech which
violated the accepted code of diplomatic procedure. He assured
Speech at the Mansion House Sir A, Nicolson to Sir R Cartwright, July 24, 1911:
1
speech of Lloyd George which, they tell you, was no sudden inspiration but a care
"The
fully thought-out one/ (British Documents . vol. vii, p. 396.) To what extent was Lloyd
. .
George the mouthpiece of his colleagues? The question has never been cleared up.
According to Churchill (The World Crisis, pp. 46-7) he submitted the draft of his speech
to Churchill, Asquith, and Grey in turn. So far as Grey is concerned, the statement has
been confirmed by himself. (Twenty-five Years lB92-19i6 vol. i, pp. 224-5.) Grey how
t
ever states that he suggested no change in the wording but approved the speech as it
stood. On the other hand what weight should we attach to a story which the Austrian
Ambassador in Berlin heard from the Emperor, who in turn heard it from a Hamburg
commercial magnate, who was his intimate friend (probably Ballin)? According to this
story Lloyd George in the course of a conversation with the Emperor s informant excused
himself by ascribing the entire responsibility for the invidious passage to his colleagues.
Himself a stranger to foreign politics he had simply read the text put into his hands by
Asquith and Greyt (Szogyeny despatch from Berlin, December 19, 1911: Gsterretch-
Ungarns Aussenpolitik, vol. iii, pp. 698-9.)
427
the British Government that his Government had no intention of
establishing itself in Morocco. But when Sir Edward proposed

resettle the Moroccan
an international congress to question he
1
replied by demanding the simple restoration of the status quo,
which would do nothing to obviate the risks of an armed conflict
between the French and the Germans. Already, the day before
Lloyd George s speech, the English and French General Staffs
had concerted the emergency measures to be taken. 2 On the 26th
the newspapers informed the
public that the Atlantic Squadron,
instead of starting for its manoeuvres in
Norwegian waters, had
received orders to concentrate at Portsmouth, and in
spite of a
reassuring official denial the conclusion was universally drawn
that the
Admiralty, foreseeing a rupture between France and
Germany, was preparing for war. On the 2yth the Premier,
3
speaking in the House of Commons, explained the attitude of the

Government. Though it hoped that the conversations between
France and Germany might lead to an agreement honourable and
satisfactory to both parties, it could not remain passive if they
broke down. England would be obliged to intervene because she
was a party to the Pact of Algeciras, because she had made an
agreement with France in 1904, and because her interests were
affected. Balfour, the Unionist leader,
gave the Prime Minister,
as we should
expect, his hearty support, and even Ramsay Mac-
Donald, the Labour leader, felt himself obliged to introduce into
the peroration of a pacifist
speech a patriotic utterance. *I do pray
that no
European nation will assume for a single moment that
party divisions in this country will weaken the national spirit or
national union. 4
If the immediate effect of
Lloyd George s speech at Berlin had
been an outburst of anger, after ten days of strain the conversa
tions between France and
Germany became at the beginning of
August a piece of bargaining. And the Germans drove a hard
1 Count von Metternich to von Kiderlen-Wachter, London, July 25, 1911. (Die Grosse
Politik . . . vol. xxxix, p. 213.)
2
Memorandum of Meeting held on July 20, 1911 between General Dubail and General
Wilson. August n, 1911 (British Documents . vol. vii,
3
.
pp. 629 sqq.).
.
In his memoirs General

Macready adds a curious detail. So acute was the tension that
on the 28th of July a subordinate officer in an access of nervous enthusiasm
despatched
telegrams to all record offices to the effect that clerks were to remain on duty night and
day, in case mobilization should be suddenly ordered. Happily thefaux pas was discovered
and rectified before it became
4
public property. (Annals of an Active Life, vol. i, p. 161.)
H. of C, July 27, 1911 (Parliamentary Debates, Commons
1911, 5th Series, voL xxviii,
p. 1831).
428
ENGLAND AND GERMANY
bargain: for if they abandoned their claim to the whole of the
French Congo, they persisted in demanding, in spite of French
opposition, an extension on the Atlantic Coast of their territory
in the Cameroons and above all means of access to the Congo and
Ubangi. While the French Foreign Minister was negotiating
directly with the German Minister for Foreign Affairs through the
French Ambassador at Berlin, the Prime Minister, Caillaux, was
secretly conducting parallel negotiations through an unofficial
channel. And the bargaining was complicated by the growing
excitement of the patriotic Press in both countries which made it
increasingly difficult to reach a compromise mutually acceptable.
Throughout the negotiations Sir Edward Grey, regularly in
formed of their progress by the French, acted as a moderating
influence. It was in vain that the Quai d Orsay attempted to arouse
his opposition to some particular German demand. He maintained
that every demand for territorial compensation should be con
sidered whether it were in Morocco itself, or in Equatorial Africa
or, as it was suggested at one moment, in the Indian Ocean or the
Pacific. The one
thing that mattered was to prevent a rupture of
the negotiations which would involve war a war in which
England would be obliged to participate and not allow the
French Foreign Office to make the British responsible for the
rejection of any German claim. And the anxiety of the Foreign
Office reached a climax when towards the middle of August the
French Government became convinced, on evidence which it
believed to be reliable, that the German Government was bent on
war and communicated its fears to the British Government at a
juncture when circumstances rendered the prospect particularly

formidable for both countries.
For the diplomatic situation was unfavourable. Since Isvolsky s
fall the Anglo-Russian entente seemed to be in process of dissolu
tion. In Persia the English and Russians were at loggerheads

almost as openly as the Germans and French in Morocco. And
though the official declarations of the Russian Ambassadors in
Paris and London were reassuring and the French and Russian
staffs maintained close contact, indeed that very August a military
convention was concluded between the two Powers, the Russian

Government made a gesture whose meaning could not be
doubted. It publishedon August 19 the agreement of Potsdam
by which Russia consented to support the German construction
429
of the Bagdad railway on condition it were not extended into the
zone of Persia assigned to Russia by the agreement of 1907. It
was a the Franco-German agreement of
deliberate reply to
February 9, 1909, concluded when the Bosnian crisis was at its

height. Then France had betrayed Russia. Now Russia betrayed
France.
The domestic situation was also unsatisfactory! The struggle
between the two Houses had indeed reached its conclusion on
August 3 But though the final debates had been stormy the atten
.
tion of the public was elsewhere, concentrated on the series of

strikes, which after a temporary interruption about the beginning
ofJuly, broke out afresh with a violence hitherto unexperienced,
in the port of London first, then at
Liverpool. The workmen
rioted, the troops were called out, there were shootings and deaths.
And now the agitation spread to the railwaymen. War has begun ,
declared the Secretary of their Union r1 not war between

England,
and Germany, but the class war under the fcrni of a general strike
on the railways. It seemed a revival of the Englishman s Home
acted by the entire nation.
12
On August 1 8 the morning papers prepared their readers for

the imminent rupture of the Franco-German
negotiations. The
same day at the request of the general staff of the army and con
trary to established usage, the House of Commons passed without
debate the second and third readings of an Official Secrets Act
which reinforced the powers of censorship possessed by the
Government in the event of war. 2 The same day the Russian
1
Keeling to Mrs. Townshend, August 18, 1911: The Strike is magnificent. Nothing
else really matters (Keeling, Letters and Recollections, p. 92).
2
An Act to re-enact the Official Secrets Act, 1889 with amendments (Official Secrets Act,
1911). The first reading of the Bill had been passed the day before. Only one division had
been taken, in which the Opposition mustered only ten votes as against 107.
Among these
seven besides Keir Hardie we notice the names of
Lansbury, Henderson, MacDonald, and
Snowden. But the division was concerned only with a point of detail. In substance the Bill
was passed unanimously. (Parliamentary Debates, Commons 191.1, 5th Series, vol. xxrx,
pp. 2251 sqq.). For the pressure brought to bear upon the Speaker by all the members,
and even from the Labour benches to induce him to
accept this radical breach with con
stitutional custom see Major-General the
Right Honourable J. E. B. Seely, Adventure,
p. 144. In his reminiscences the Speaker passes over these difficulties with a majestic silence
and mentions only the strike Just at this moment there was a
general railway strike which
mightily inconvenienced all holiday traffic and postponed for some days the adjournment;
but die strike being temporarily settled, we rose for the autumn recess on the 22nd of
August to meet again on the 24th of October. In the autumn I went to Scotland for some
430
ENGLAND AND GERMANY
Ambassadors in Paris and London informed the Governments to
whom they were accredited that the Potsdam agreement would
be made public on the following day. That same day the Cabinet
made a desperate effort to prevent the general strike on the rail
ways. Lloyd George took the .railway directors and the trade-
union officials into his confidence, and begged them in the
national interest at a moment when the was on the country verge
of war to effect a settlement. He was successful. The strike did not
take place. And the menace of war also vanished. On the 22nd,
Parliament was prorogued until October but on the following
day, August 23, the Cabinet decided to call a meeting of the
Committee of Imperial Defence to discuss the general military
situation in the eventof war. The high command was very pessi
mistic about the Russian army. But it was optimistic, too
optimis
tic some of the members of the Committee
thought, as to the
capacity of the French army to resist a German invasion with the
help of a British expeditionary force. But what the Government
chiefly wished to ascertain was whether the Admiralty and the
War Office were working in harmony. In point of fact there was
no co-operation or common policy.
As the result of a series of conversations begun in 1906, detailed *
arrangements had been made for joint action by the staffs of the
British and French armies. But during these five years no com
munications had passed between the two Admiralties. How many
soldiers should be sent to France, at which ports they should be
embarked and disembarked and at what pointsf they should be
concentrated on all these matters agreement had been reached
on both sides of the Channel. But the crossing itself must be pro
tected and not only had the Admiralty made no plans for this, it
did not even wish to make any. For the British navy was opposed
to the rapid despatch of an expeditionary force to the French
front. It wanted complete freedom during the requisite period of
weeks or months to seek out the German fleet and destroy it in a
great battle which would be the twentieth century Trafalgar.
This once accomplished and England once more mistress of the
seas, the Admiralty had no objection to the despatch of a British
stalking and shooting* (Lord Ullswater, A

Speaker s Commentaries, vol. i, p. n?)- Keir
Hardie in his account of the railway strike (Kitting no Murder! The Government and the
Railway Strike) makes no allusion to the danger of war. Lord Askwith (Industrial Problems
and Disputes, p. 166) mentions it but gives us to understand that it was perhaps only a scare
engineered by Lloyd George to make the companies and men come to terms.
VOL VI 1 6 43 *
force to the Continent. But want the troops to be sent
it did not
to France where the British army would help the French to win
French victories. It wanted them sent to German territory, and
landed on the coast of Hanover to win victories which would be
published in the Paris
1
exclusively English. Thus
the revelations
Press on the occasion of the Tangier incident which had made a
considerable sensation on the Continent were proved true. Sir
Arthur Wilson, the First Sea Lord, explained the Admiralty s
views to the Committee. McKenna defended the standpoint of
the Navy. But this divergence of policy could not be permitted to
continue without grave possibly immediate danger. Haldane
his colleagues. Long weary of the War Office,
pointed this out to
where in his opinion there was nothing more for him to do, he
had already attempted when the Cabinet was remodelled after
it for the Exchequer.
Campbell-Bannerman s death to exchange
He had failed owing to the opposition of the Gladstonians in the
Cabinet. Now he asked for the Admiralty and was faced no
2
doubt by the same opposition. But it was clear that McKenna was
3
doomed, as Lord Tweedmouth had been doomed in 1908. Ten

months later Churchill left the Home Office, where he was no
*
longer a success, and took his place.

Once again at the beginning of September, war was believed to
be imminent. The French Government, before deciding what
would be willing to make in Equatorial
territorial concessions it
Africa, wanted to know what freedom of action Germany would

concede in Morocco. A draft convention was laid before the
German Government which replied by putting forward an agree
ment of a very different tenor. The German document proposed
to set up an economic condominium throughout Morocco like
that whose failure had brought the French army to Fez and the
German fleet to Agadir, and which in the Sous district round
well as
Agadir would be a literal condominium, political as
Churchill, The World Crisis 1911-14, 1923, pp. 58-9. See also Lord Hal-
1 Winston S.
dane s remarks reported by J. H. Morgan. The Riddle of Lord Haldane (Quarterly Review,
January 1929, vol. cdxc, p. 185). See also F. W. Roch, Mr. Lloyd George and
the War, 1920,
p. 47. Cf. Sir John Fisher to Lord

Esher: The regular Army (as distinguished from the
Home Army and the Indian Army) should be a projectile to be fired by the Navy
(Admiral Bacon, Life of Lord Fisher, vol. i, p. 206). The Same to the Same, September 20,
1911: 1 simply tremble at the consequences if the British Red Coats are to be planted on
the Vosges Frontier* (Lord Fisher, Memories, p. 206).
2
John Morgan, John Viscount Morley, an Appreciation and Some Reminiscences, 1924, p. 48.
3
See F. W. Rich, Lloyd George and the War, 1920, p. 50. J. H. Morgan, The Riddle of
Lord Haldane (Quarterly Review, No. 499, January 1929, vol. ccbtii, p. 185).
432
ENGLAND AND GERMANY
economic. The agreement was not
acceptable either to France or
to England; the negotiations reached a deadlock, and a final rup
ture; a German landing at Agadir and war were in sight. Germany
and France made preparations for the event of war: Belgium
mobilized. In London panic prevailed in naval circles when the
Admiralty s scouts one day lost sight of the German fleet on the
high seas. Would the German navy repeat on a large scale the
blow of Chemulpo, by destroying one by one the vessels of the
three British squadrons scattered to the south, east and north of
Great Britain? In the utmost secrecy the War Office recalled
officers and soldiers on leave and assembled the officers of the
Territorial Army. 1 But for the third time the storm dispersed.
13
During forty years of European peace the nations had ceased to

contemplate war as a serious possibility. Before their attitude could
be so changed that war once more became a genuine likelihood,
more years of nerve-wrecking tension were required and the
equilibrium of Europe must be more profoundly disturbed. A
financial crisis broke out in Germany at the beginning of Sep
tember. was due primarily to economic causes, but it was
It
aggravated by the prospect of war and when the Bank of France

forbade all export of gold it became evident to the whole world
how solid still was the old structure of French capitalism, how
weak the new structure of German industrialism. The advocates
of peace once more gained the upper hand in Germany. They
were assisted by the personal action of the Emperor William who
had long opposed a naval demonstration in Moroccan waters, at
the end had yielded with reluctance to his ministers decision, and
was delighted to be able to resume what a contemporary termed
his fantastic dream of a rapprochement between France and Ger-
1 See Captain Faber revelations in a speech at Andover, November 9, 1911 (Daily

s
Telegraph, November 20,1911). According to another account the episode was even more
dramatic. A
British cruiser had encountered in British waters off the coast of Scotland the
German high seas fleet drawn up in battle formation and preceded by its scouting vessels
and lie German fleet had then been lost sight of and for this
torpedo-boat-destroyers,
grave dereliction of duty two officers in high command had been dismissed from the
Service. (W. Morgan Shuster, The Strangling of Persia, a record ofEuropean Diplomacy, 1912,
p. 222.)
433
many .
1
He was encouraged by the fact that the French Prime
Minister thoroughly distrusted the Franco-British entente, was a
convinced advocate of friendly relations with Germany, and ever
since the end of August had been corresponding directly with
the French Ambassador at Berlin over the head of his Foreign
Minister. In September and October it was Caillaux, not de Selves,
who was in charge of the negotiations.
In England the domestic situation improved. For the moment
no strike on a large scale occurred. In October, however, the
Commons reassembled to pass the National Insurance Bill and the
debates on its clauses were sufficiently heated to fill the columns of
the Press. On
the other hand, at the end of September an Italian
army suddenly invaded the Tripolitana and transferred the atten
tion ofjournalists from Fez to and the war between Italy
Tripoli,
and Turkey involved the diplomatists of all the Great Powers in
a labyrinth of new problems connected with the Mediterranean

and the Balkans, in which they were slow to find their way. This
enabled the conversations between France and Germany to be
conducted more quietly unwatched by the public, and the French
representatives went on gaining ground
at the expense of the
German. Instead of the entire French possessions in Equatorial
Africa though France it is true abandoned her claim to Togo
Germany obtained only some 63,000 square miles of territory,
an enclave within the French colonies with two punctures open
ing into the Ubanghi and Congo, through which France kept a
right of transport. Moreover, she accepted a slight rectification
of the frontier in favour of France in die region of Lake Chad.
On the other hand, she gave France complete freedom to help
the Government of Morocco to introduce the administrative, judi
cial, economic, fiscal, and military reforms necessary for the good
government of the empire/ The purpose of this concession was, in

die language of the official text, to carry out in the general interest
the work of pacification and progress contemplated by the pact of
AlgetirasMn reality, theconvention departedfromtheprovisions of
that instrument of internationalization, as is clear from an explana
tory letter Kiderlen appended to the document whichstated thatif

ever the French Government should see fit to declare a protectorate
of Morocco the Imperial Government would raise no objection*.
1 lieutenant-Colonel Pelle" to M.
Messrmy, Minister for "War, December 16, 1911.
(Documents diplomatique* franfris, 1871~19i4, 3rd Series, 1911-14, voL i, p. 346.).
434
ENGLAND AND GERMANY
We can well imagine the feelings with which
Germany received
the agreement of November 4. The despatch of the Panther to
Agadir in July had been an imprudent because of the
step it
hopes
had inevitably aroused. The German public were confident that
their country would claim her share in Morocco and was
strong
enough to obtain it or in default of a portion of Morocco would
receive elsewhere concessions so important that in the
eyes of the
world they would represent a striking diplomatic success. As we
have seen, these expectations were disappointed. The minister for
the colonies resigned rather than put his signature to an
agreement
he regarded as treason to his
country s interests. The Emperor,
always suspected with good reason of favouring a policy of
rapprochement with France, found himself attacked by a clique at
court of which the Crown Prince put himself at die head and
by a large section of the Press and public. An epidemic of Anglo
phobia and Gallophobia traversed Germany.
What is more surprising, the agreement was equally unpopular
in France. What, the pubHc asked, was the meaning of these two
outlets pushed forward to the Ubanghi and Congo by the new
German territory? Were they only fragments of what Germany
had hoped to receive and had renounced or were they stakes
planted for a future claim? Had Germany even abandoned all
claim to a pre-emption on the Belgian Congo ? An ambiguous
clause of the agreement left the point doubtful. Finally, the publi
cation of the secret clauses of the Franco-British entente of 1904
respecting Morocco revealed that in return for the territory she

renounced on the Congo France was to receive not the whole of
Morocco but Morocco without the Riff, which was assigned to
Spain. Nor was it simply on these points of detail that complaints
were raised. The public took offence at the very idea of territorial
compensation. Accustomed by now to the entente cordiale and
encouraged, if not by the British Government, at least by an
entire group of English diplomatists and journalists, French public
opinion considered that England was under an obligation to help

France to obtain everything she had promised her in 1904 and
that with England s aid she was strong enough to secure it. More
over, the despatch of the Panther to the harbour of Agadir had
produced the same bad effect in Paris as in Berlin; since July every
territorial concession made by France was regarded as extorted
from the weaker by the more powerful nation. The negotiations
435
had been conducted during the recess of the Chambers, a circum
stance which had considerably facilitated the negotiators task.
The position changed when the Chambers reassembled and were
invited to ratify the agreements. Popular feeling displays surpris
ing changes of front. Six years before, the Chambers had over
thrown Delcasse because he had committed France too far to the
which they regarded as dangerous and Rouvier,
entente cordiale,
the champion of a rapprochement with Germany, had been vic
torious. Now Caillaux was pursuing the same policy as Rouvier
then. And he was employing the same method of secret negotia
tions behind the back of his Foreign Minister. Moreover, he had
been more successful than Rouvier had been, for the Imperial
Government had conceded to him what it had refused to Rouvier
as well as to Delcass6 and liberated France from the shackles
imposed upon her action in Morocco by the pact of Algeciras.

Nevertheless, it was upon his head, as then upon Delcasse s that
the Chambers discharged the vials of their wrath. In January he
would be driven from office and with his fall French foreign
policy would change its attitude once more.
14
Thus the agreement of November 4, far from improving the

relations between France and Germany, made them worse.
English opinion in turn took fire and as in Germany and France
retrospectively, when a series of sensational revelations informed
the country that on two or three occasions during the previous
summer it had been on the brink of war. Without its knowledge
was the bitter comment of advanced Liberal critics, and not to
defend any British interest but simply to give France another
colony. They severely censured Sir Edward Grey s policy. They
depicted England as a nation sacrificed to the superstition of the
European balance of power a catspaw serving everywhere the
interests of
foreign nations, in the Near East betrayed by Russian
imperialism, in the West drawn by French nationalism further
than she desired to go. Arthur
Ponsonby, a democrat of noble
birth and a violent
opponent of the entente with Russia, published
a pamphlet which made a stir
by demanding that foreign policy
ENGLAND AND GERMANY
should be subject at every step to popular control. 1 These Liberal
critics of the Government were not a but they were
large group
zealous propagandists and their arguments produced an obvious
effect upon the entire party. Even certain Conservatives, burdened
by taxation and alarmed by the spread of labour unrest, began to

ask themselves whether Grey s policy were not in certain respects
imprudent and whether it was wise to surrender the foreign policy

of the country blindly into his hands. The Standard, an organ of
orthodox Toryism and until the middle of November extremely
hostile to Germany, suddenly changed its tone about that date
and began a campaign in favour of a rapprochement with Berlin. 2
While approving the policy pursued by the Foreign Office, Bonar
Law, the new leader of the Unionist party in the Commons, and
Lord Lansdowne, the leader of the Opposition in the Lords, made
the same criticism of the Government. Both blamed Grey for
having on July 26th left it to Lloyd George to state the British

attitude in the Moroccan dispute. They hinted that the interfer
ence of a demagogue had been prejudicial to the cause of peace. 3
Unquestionably, these attacks upon the policy pursued by the
Foreign Office and these expressions of a desire for a rapprochement
with Germany were sincere. But it is equally certain that taken
as a whole they were deliberately or unconsciously ambiguous.
"We were not aware ,
the malcontents complained, that we
were so near war. The Government deceived and betrayed us.
Was this true? Lloyd George s
speech in July was certainly the
reverse of secret diplomacy and the naval preparations which
followed were published in the Press. On
the other hand, not a
syllable had appeared in the Press about the panic of August or
the true nature of the ministerial intervention which ended the
railway strike. Neither had a syllable appeared about the panic in
September and the military measures adopted at that time. But
is it credible that all those in the confidence of the Government
1
Democracy and the Control of Foreign Affairs, 1912. This pamphlet of thirty pages may
be regarded as the source from which were derived both the tide and programme of the
Union of Democratic Control formed in November 1914 to protest against the war with
Germany whose leaders would play such an important part in British policy after the war
when German naval power had been destroyed.
2
Cf. in the November number of the Fortnightly Review the article entitled Sir Edward
Grey s Stewardship* and Sir Sidney Low s article An Anglo-French Alliance (New .
Series, vol. xc, pp. 963 sqq., 999 scjq.).

3 H. of
C., November 27, 1911 (Parliamentary Debates, Commons 1911, 5th Series, vol.
xxxii, pp. 70 sqq.) H. of L., November 28, 1911 (Parl. Deb., Lords 1911, 5th Ser., vol. x,
pp. 392 sqq.).
437
in September there were a host of them kept such strict silence
that not a single newspaper was informed? The silence of the
entire Press Radical as well as Unionist a deliberate silence,
inspired by the patriotic wish not to embarrass the Government.

The country did not know because it refused to know. There is an
ignorance whose true name is connivance.
Yes/ Grey s critics
replied, "we refused to know because on the
particular issue we were bound by the agreement of
to France
1904. But the question of Morocco, the only question on which
we pledged ourselves to her, has now been settled in her favour.
In future, whatever dispute may arise between France and Ger
many our liberty is complete. We
are perfectly free, if we wish,
to remain neutral or even side with Germany/ Here again we
must ask: Was it true? Was it really the conflict between France
and Germany in Morocco which divided England and Germany,
and opposed the British to the German navy? On the contrary, if
England, instead of disputing the possession of Morocco with
France, as she would have done had Germany remained a nation
without a navy, decided to abandon Morocco to her, was it not
in order to protect herself against the new danger presented by
the appearance on the high seas of a powerful German fleet? And
was that danger less after Agadir than before Tangier? Would
Germany desist from building giant ironclads because the Moroc
can question had been settled to her disadvantage? The important
speech Sir Edward Grey delivered in the House of Commons on
November 27 to defend his policy contained only a single sen
tence dealing with the naval problem, but it is the
key to the
was impossible, he pointed out, to return to the
entire speech. It
policy of splendid isolation It would ally all the powers of

.
Europe against England. In the course of a few years, we should

be building warships not against a Two-Power Standard, but
probably against the united navies of Europe/ The Foreign Office
therefore continued unmoved the policy it had pursued for the
last six years, in the certainty that it
represented die fundamental
interest and the genuine will of the British
people. But at the
same time it took account of the fact that the policy of the Triple
Entente aroused in the country misgivings by no means devoid
of foundation and that in the years to come that policy would
have to be pursued under stormier skies and in more difficult
circumstances than hitherto.
438
PART UI
ON THE BRINK OF THE CATASTROPHE

CHAPTER I
Domestic Anarchy
I THE SYNDICALIST REVOLT
that the Parliament Bill had been passed, what use
NOW would
it
the Government make of it? Which Bill would
choose to carry for the first time in 1912, for the second
in 1913, if the House of Lords threw it out in 1912, and if again
the Lords opposed their veto, for the third time in 1914, then
however definitely and without appeal? A
Home Rule Bill was
introduced, as everyone expected. For the hour had come to
pay for the support which since January 1910 the eighty or so
Irish Nationalists had
unswervingly given die Government, and
it was this Bill as everyone equally expected, that would prove
the storm centre on which the party
struggle would concentrate
its force. AWelsh Disestablishment Bill was introduced at the
same time. The thirty Welsh Radicals whose leader Lloyd George
had been before he became the great popular leader and promin
ent statesman of the entire country, like the Irish Nationalists
wanted their reward and the disestablishment of the State Church
in their little principality was the symbol of their desire for devo
lution. For the Welsh Nonconformists constituted
three-quarters
of the Welsh people and regarded the Welsh Anglicans as repre
sentatives of an alien Church forced
upon Wales from without.
Once already in 1909 the Liberal Government had introduced a
Bill to abolish the privileges of the Anglican Church in Wales, but
there had been no time to discuss it. Now the path was free. The
Bill of 1912 provided that the four Welsh dioceses should no
longer form part of the province of Canterbury, the Welsh

Bishops should no longer sit in the House of Lords, all ecclesias
tical
jurisdiction should be abolished and the laws of the Anglican
Church should be held binding in Wales only in virtue of the tacit
consent of the Welsh Anglicans, who would, moreover, be free
to hold synods and set up a representative body to govern their
Church. These measures of disestablishment were accompanied
by measures of disendowment. The church buildings and all gifts
made to the Church since 1662 were left in her hands. Of the
441
DOMESTIC ANARCHY
remaining endowments a quarter would be given to the Univer

sity of Wales, three-quarters to the County Councils
to be spent
on public services and particularly on poor relief. The Bill was
bitterly attacked by the Unionist party, which was the accredited
defender of the Church of England and witnessed witn alarm
the Church in process of dismemberment. But the country as
a whole took no interest in the question. It was quite clear that
the Bill, wnich the Lords threw out in two successive sessions,
would become law at the time fixed by the Parliament Act, if the
Liberal Government remained in office so long.
Both Bills be it noticed the important Bill to grant Home
Rule to Ireland and the minor Bill to disestablish the Church in
Wales were intended to satisfy local sections of the United
Kingdom, neither of which was in the true sense English. Was
nothing to be done for England herself, or for the United King
dom as a whole? To begin with the Government might fulfil the
promise contained in the preamble to the Parliament Bill and
reform the House of Lords after restricting its powers. But it was
content with repeating the promise and never kept it. Neither
party really desired the reform in question and the country did
not demand it. Instead a Franchise and Registration Bill was
introduced to effect such a reform of the franchise that England
should be at last what France had been since 1848 and the German
Empire since its creation in 1871, a country of universal suffrage.
For even now universal suffrage did not exist in England. In 1910
out of twelve million adult males in the United Kingdom only
some seven million seven hundred were voters. 1 This left over
1
Parliamentary Constituencies (Electors, etc.) (United Kingdom) Return showing with regard
to each parliamentary constituency in the United Kingdom, the total number and, asfar as
possible,
the number of each class of electors on the Registerfor the year 1910 , and also showing the
popula
tion and inhabited houses of each constituency, 1910 For an estimate of the number of adults
who did not possess the vote, which the nature of the British franchise makes it extremely
difficult to calculate, see the very different results reached by
contemporaries: H. of C.,
February 12, 1908. The Attorney-General s speech. There were 7,250,000 on the register
as opposed to the 10,000,000 who should be mere, if, as would be the case under a system
of adult male suffrage, a quarter of the population possessed the franchise. (Parliamentary
Debates, 4th Series, vol. cboodv, p. 143.) H. of C., January 23, 1913, Asquith s speech: an
electorate of 7,500,000 to 8,000,000; 2,000,000 or 2,500,000 adult males without a vote
(Parl Deb., Commons, 1913, 5th Ser., vol. xlvil, p. 653). Cf. A. Lawrence Lowell, The
Government of England, 1908, vol. i, p. 213. Price Collier, England and the English, 1909.
(Popular edition 1911, p. 288) gives the figure of 700,000 adult males without the fran
chise, a gross underestimate. L. G. Chiozza Money (Things that Matter . 1914, .pp. 189
. .
sqq.), taking into account the plural vote and the lodgers who did not take the trouble to
have their names placed on the register, estimated at 38.6 per cent the proportion of adult
males not on the register.
442
THE SYNDICALIST REVOLT
four million adult males without the vote. And those four million
comprised not only lunatics, prisoners, and men deprived of the
franchise for offences at common law, but also paupers in the
technical sense, that is to say all in receipt of poor relief. They also
included other categories which the motley and complicated fran
chise established by the successive Reform Bills of the nineteenth
century had left without a vote. A

man-servant who lived in his
master house, a son who lived with his father had no vote,
s
though a gardener or gamekeeper had because he had a separate

lodging. A
lodger, who paid for his lodging a rent not below ten
pounds, could vote. But was the workman who sublet a room
from a lodger himself a lodger within the meaning of the law?
On point legal decisions conflicted, so that the British fran
this
1
chise was not only limited but also uncertain. Moreover the
registers were revised only once

a year: an official whose promo
tion was rapid, a labourer obliged to change his place of abode
frequently to obtain work, were therefore often
unable to claim a
vote. In consequence, moreover, of the plural vote the franchise
operated unfairly in favour of the rich. Anyone who possessed

several places of residence, business premises and a dwelling-house
or a town and a country house had a vote for each of these. There
were, it was calculated, over half a million plural voters in the
United Kingdom. They were particularly numerous in the
London district, where their vote had, in January 1910, it was
estimated, cost seven or eight Liberal candidates their seat.
2
We
have already noticed the Government s attempt to correct the ano
maly in 1907. It had been defeated by the opposition of the Lords.
When in 1908 Asquith became Prime Minister, he seems to
have thought of making a general reform of the franchise the
3
battlefield between the two Houses. Lloyd George and Churchill
1
The registers were compiled, so far as the lodgers" franchise* was concerned, by
the party agents,
Revising Barristers, subject to no control except the check exercised by
who could appeal to the Court of King s Bench. See Michael MacDonagh The Making
of Parliament* (Nineteenth Century and After, No. 347, January 1906, vol. lix, p. 31). On
this and many other points the impartiality of the judge who had to decide the validity or
invalidity of an election was not always above suspicion.

See the incident of the Yarmouth
Election Petition and Judge Grantham s decision, May 4, 1906. The public after a little
Grantham
grumbling accepted it. But the matter was re-opened when in January 1911
his decision by maintaining that his col
violating every precedent attempted to justify
league Judge Channell who had differed from his opinion
was suffering from an enfeeble-
ment of his mental powers. Asquith protested. H. of C., February 8, 1911. (Part Deb.,
Commons, 1911, 5th Ser., vol. xxi, p. 291.)
2 122.
Ramsay Muir, Peers and Bureaucrats, 1900, p.
*
Speech at the Reform Club, May 21, 1908.
443
DOMESTIC ANARCHY
disagreed and he gave way. That their opposition was justified was
shown by what happened four years later when the Cabinet
decided, now that the House of Lords had been reduced to im
potence, to take up the matter afresh. The Franchise and Regis
tration Bill of 1912 set up a uniform franchise, based exclusively
on residence, which in turn was defined by occupation, reduced
to six months the interval between the revisions of the register
and abolished the plural vote. 1 But the Bill which, without actually
establishing universal suffrage, would, it was estimated, extend
the franchise to some two million five hundred thousand new
electors was
dropped amid universal indifference. The debates
which began in July in the Commons with a scanty attendance
were soon broken off. Once or twice in the course of the
debate wrote a journalist ironically, quotations from Bright or
,
Disraeli served to remind us that there had been a time when
great men were interested in a Bill for parliamentary reform/

2
How are we to explain this indifference ? In the first place, those

who were deprived of the vote were not in a position to form a
body of malcontents. They were in part the dregs of the popula
tion, below the social stratum which produced conscious revolu
tionaries. And in
part, owing to the anomalies of the existing
franchise, they were a medley of scattered individuals formed who
neither an economic class nor a political party. Neither the Liberals
nor the Unionists had a strong interest in
effecting a final exten
sion of the franchise. The Liberal
agents did indeed want the
plural vote abolished, but that was too restricted a reform to
arouse the enthusiasm of the masses. Even the trade unions were
not particularly dissatisfied with the
existing franchise. The events
which had occurred since 1906 had proved how
powerful already,
even without an extension of the
suffrage, was the pressure they
could exercise upon Parliament. Even those workers for whom
the measures of social
legislation passed during the last five years
were not enough did not blame an
insufficiently democratic
1 For the details of the Government Bill seeH. of C., June 17, 1912 J. A. Pease s
speech (Parliamentary Debates,

*
The Times, July 19, 1912.
Commons, 1912, 5th Series, vol. xxxix, ** ^
pp. 1325 sqq.).
444
franchise; they attacked the system of representative government
and parliamentary democracy. At the opening of the century the
British workers had believed that the attack made upon them by
a judicature in alliance with the employers could not be met by the
direct action of the trade unions alone, and that political action was
required. They had therefore listened to the appeal of the Socialists

and formed a Labour party to defend their interests in Parliament.
After ten years many of them, particularly among the younger
men, were dissatisfied with the results obtained by this method.
The Socialists had hoped to defeat the bourgeois policy pursued
by the secretaries of the great unions, which dominated die annual
meeting of the Trade Union Congress. But the union officials
were a very powerful body and the new Labour party had been
obliged to place them in control of its organization. The Labour
party in the Commons consisted therefore, as we have seen, en
tirely or almost entirely of trade union leaders, whose attitude
now that they were provided with the political labour ticket re
mained what it had been before the party had been created. They
were the very opposite of revolutionaries, sharing on all questions
of foreign policy and general politics the opinions of the advanced
Radicals and differing from the Radicals of bourgeois origin only
by their more professional and therefore more conservative spirit.
Unable to find in their own ranks a man with the stature of a party
leader (Keir Hardie was a dreamer and they were seeking a pre
text to shelve him), they finally turned to the only or almost the
only man in their ranks who had not been a manual labourer. But
Ramsay MacDonald was not the man to give the impression either
in the House of Commons or in the country that the advent of
the Labour party meant the birth of a new world. He had few
friends and few enemies, was in fact nothing more than a promin
ent Member of Parliament who was appointed in 1912 to sit on
an important commission of inquiry into the government of
British India and who, if report were correct, was plotting a
coalition with the Radical left wing. In that coalition Lloyd
George, not he, would have been the outstanding figure.

Nevertheless, all the important measures of social reform which
had been passed, had been passed, it seemed, under pressure from
the Labour vote. The Conservative and Liberal Members of
Parliament were equally afraid of seeing the Labour party win
seats at their expense if they did not pass such measures. But what-
445 -
DOMESTIC ANARCHY
ever benefit the workers derived from these Statutes they did not
make the Labour party more popular with the masses. To carry
them out an entire bureaucracy had to be called into existence. To
the posts thus created the Government had not instituted a
fill
system of examinations like that which protected the other

branches of the Civil Service against favouritism in every form.
The Cabinet appointed its nominees. What sort of people had
hastened to apply for all these new appointments? They were not
solely, nor even principally, Liberal politicians.
The ministers had
considered themselves justified in utilizing the practical experience
of labour possessed by the trade union officials. It was also a clever
move to conciliate by this largess the favour of the Labour party.
The Trade Board Acts had necessitated the creation of 800 posts
whose salaries reached in some cases ^1,000 a year. There was a
1
deluge of applications.
Richard Bell, the Secretary of the Railwaymen s Union, who
had been dismissed by his union in disgrace, was appointed super

intendent of the Labour Exchanges at a salary of ^400 a year. In
1910 Churchill created at the Home Office two new posts of
Labour Advisers, one of which he gave to an old official of the
Textile Workers Union, Shackleton, the other to the Welsh
miner, T. Richards, and thirty posts of sub-inspectors of mines
and quarries, to be reserved for miners and quarrymen. 2 In 1911
the passing of the National Insurance Bill brought with it another
batch of official posts to satisfy the hunger of trade union officials. 3
1
H. of C, September 28, 1909, Churchill s speech: The staff of all grades . will
. . . . .
be somewhat over 800. . Probably only about a quarter or a third will be appointed
. .
during the present financial year* (Parliamentary Debates, Commons 1909, 5th Series, vol.
xi, pp. 1075-76). September 27, 1909: *A great mass of applicants are coming in daily.
Altogether nearly 4,000 have been received and they are coming in at about the rate of 200
a day. I have had to organize a small staff for the simple purpose of docketring, filing, and
answering the applicants* (ibid., p. 921). C 5th Report of H.M. s Civil Service Conuhis-
sioners with Appendices, 1911, p. n Old civil servants were afraid that these newcomers
would be promoted over their heads. (H. of C., October 8, 1909, Sir William Bull s
question; Part. Deb., Commons 1909, sth Ser., vol. xl, p. 2461.) Cf. Standard, October 8,
1907, Nation, July 15, 1911, p. 576.
*
The Times, November 12, 13, 1910.
8
Royal Commission on Civil Service, Fourth Report of Commissioners, 1914, p. 25: "This
system ofappointment has recently been adopted to some extent for the purpose of recruit
ing officials under the National Health Insurance Act. It claims and herein lies its essential
character to determine the comparative fitness of candidates
by an appraisement,
through personal interview, supplemented by testimonials, of their qualities of education
and intelligence. Examination is often dispensed with, or, if used at all, is used only as a
qualifying test. Substantially, the system of appointment is selection by patronage, the
abuses of patronage, being, it is claimed, precluded
by the substitution of a Board or
Committee of Selection for the Patron. It makes a new departure in recruitment for the
Civil Service, which calls for the most careful examination.
446
At the beginning of 1912 Bonar Law charged the Liberal Govern
ment with having created within five or six years some four to
five thousand new administrative posts to be filled, in the majority
of cases, without competitive examination and having thus
organized a political spoils system which already resembled that

of the United States. 1 A
year later labour statistics proved that in
the last six years places had been found at the Board of Trade for
117 active union workers at a total salary of .25,240 a year, for
124 in the National Insurance Departments at a total salary of
ôr forty-eight at the Home Office at a total salary of
;33>7>
.13,600, and for eighty-five in other branches of the Civil Ser

vice at a total salary of ^34,800.
Worse still, since the judgment of the courts in the Osborne
case had precluded the trade unions from employing part of their
funds for political purposes and in particular from paying their
Parliamentary representatives a salary on which to live while in
the service of the House, the Cabinet in compensation abandoned
the principle that the representatives of the nation should be un
paid and passed a resolution in accordance with which the House

voted every member of the Commons an annual salary of 400*
In ipi2 3 a new Statute expressly conferred on the trade unions the
right to spend their funds for political objects with the reservation
destined to remain a dead letter that the political fund of a
union should be a special fund, to which individual members
should be free to refuse their subscription. The Members of Parlia
ment kept their salary all the same. The union official would
perhaps no longer be so completely the servant of his union, kept
in the strictest tutelage ashe had been hitherto. Henceforward a
path of escape was open and the ambitious workman could
promise himself after some years of toil and bondage, a fixed
salary of which his class could not deprive him, at least for the
1
Speech at the Albert Hall, January 26, 1912.
2
H. of C., August 10, 1911 (Parliamentary Debates, Commons 1911, vol. xxix, pp. 1365
sqq.). The first session under the Liberal Government had hardly opened in 1906 when
the members of the majority urged that Election expenses should be defrayed by the State
and not by the candidate, that members letters should be franked and that they should
receive a salary of 300 (k of C., March 1, 1906). J. N. Barnes* question. March 6, 1906,
s motion (Part. Deb., 4th Ser., vol. clii, p.
J. Rowlands motion, March 7, 1906, H. Lever
1310; voL cliii, pp. 388 sqq.; pp. 522 sqq.). Both motions had been passed by the
Com
mons and the ministers had declared themselves favourable in principle to the proposals,
simply asking for the necessary time to give effect to the vote of the majority. Actually,
nothing was done until 1912.
3
2 &
3 Geo. V., Cap. 30: An Act to amend the Law with respect to
the objects and
powers of Trade Unions (Trade Union Act, 1913).
447
DOMESTIC ANARCHY
life of one Parliament got into the House of Commons for
if he
life, if having forfeited the approval of

his union or failed to
secure re-election he had contrived to obtain a post at the Board

of Trade or Home Office. All this is sufficient to explain on the
in the cause of labour who had
part of all those active workers
secure berths in the Civil Service, and of those masses of trade
unionists whose sole ambition was to improve the conditions of
1
their labour, a growing distrust and contempt for politics .
Even the material advantages the workers derived from the

new legislation aroused no feelings of gratitude. The little
they
obtained merely encouraged them to demand far more. They
observed that of all the measures passed up to 1911, only one, the
Act of 1909 on Trade Boards, dealt with the question of wages,
and it was a very timid measure, and the last of the series, the
National Insurance Act, imposed a compulsory payment out of
the economic
wages. But it was the question of wages which in
situation of the country interested the working class more than
any other. We must once more insist on the extraordinary indus

trial prosperity of the years immediately preceding
the war. The
crisisof 1908 had been overcome. Imports had risen from
.542,600,000 in 1903 (the year in which Chamberlain opened
his campaign in favour of tariff reform) to ^592,933,000 in
1908, and exports during the same period from .360,374,000
to ^456,728,000. Neither the revolutionary Budget of 1909 nor
two years of constitutional conflict, nor the cloud which twice
1
For the bad effects of the Government s
policy on the organization of the tutorial
classes (for these classes see Book I, p. 88-90) see Albert Mansbridge, University Tutorial
Classes: AStudy in the Development of Higher Education among Working Men
and Women,
I9I3 p- 56: The actual number of students who have accepted appointments as Labour
Exchange Officials or in connection with the Insurance Act is not to hand, but the effect is
considerable. Several classes have, in this way, lost secretaries and replaced them by, to
say the -least of it, less efficient men. And Mansbridge without actually condemning a
system of recruitment which presents its advantages and is often necessary expresses the
wish that as few students in tutorial classes as possible should obtain appointments in the
public service by virtue of their having been in such classes Cf. A. P. Orage, National
.
Guilds, 1914, pp. 217-18 : It is not generally realized how successfully the present Govern
ment has sterilized the Socialist and Labour Movement by enlisting in the ranks of the
bureaucracy energetic young Fabians as well as prominent political Socialists and Labour
leaders. Large posts in London, smaller posts in the provinces. . . . The accession to the
ranks of the Civil Service of a certain number of men alleged to be democrats has, of
course,, in no way democratized Downing Street and its purlieus. Classification still rules,
appointments to the first class still being the perquisite of the universities. In this way the
bureaucratic organization is securely linked to the governing classes; they worship the
same God; their tone, manners, and ambition derive from the same- source. It is not, there
fore, surprising that the British bureaucracy is regarded by the bulk of the working popu
lation as an element of oppression.
448
overhung international relations, liad prevented the country

growing more prosperous. Imports had risen to .624,705,000
in 1909, .678,257,000 in 1910 and .680,158,000 in 1911,
exports to .469,525,000 in 1909, .534,146,000 in 1910 and

556,878,000 in 1911. In 1912, in spite of a serious social con
flict at home and the outbreak in the Balkans of a war which
threatened to become universal, imports reached .744,641,000,
exports .598,961,000. It was no use for the Tariff Reformers

to
argue that the favourable impression produced by these figures

was illusory and that when prices were continually rising an in
crease in the value of exports did not mean an increase in the
amount of goods exported. The calculations of the free traders
proved that exports had increased not only in value but in amount.
But if there seemed little to justify the claims of the Tariff Refor
mers, it was very different with the claims of the Socialists, or to
use a less theoretical term, of Labour.
The workers were justified in pointing out that the employers
profited more than themselves by this
rise in prices. It is true their
wages rose but not in proportion to the rise in the cost of food
and other necessities of life; or, to speak more strictly, the rise in
wages always lagged behind the increased cost of living. And
1
how did the workers obtain the increase in their wages, such as it
was? Political action obviously effected nothing. The workers

must bring direct pressure to bear on the employers. An import
ant Statute had been passed in 1906, snatched by fear from the
It was the Act which had legalized
politicians of the older parties.
peaceful picketing and freed the unions from all financial liability.
After years of restricted action, the working class was once more
free to wield against the employers the only efficacious weapon
at its disposal, not the vote but the strike.
The movement of discontent among the working class was
inevitably accompanied by the revival of an extremist policy
the. Socialist leaders. Its first symptom had been the elec-
among
1
For the fall in real wages see Abstract of Labour Statistics, Board of Trade (Labour Depart
ment) Fifteenth Abstract ofLabour Statistics in the United Kingdom, 1912, pp. 70, 152.
Accord
to 99.70 while the
ing to this calculation wages rose between 1895 and 1910 from 88.23
retail price of articles of food in London rose from 93.2 to 109.9. L. G. Chiozza Money,
Things that Matter. Papers upon Subjects which are or ought to be under Discussion, 1912, Chap.
i: The Recent Fall in Real Wages/ also Chap, xxiii: The Rise in the Poverty Line*
that the fall in real wages in England was
(pp. i, sqq.; 252 sqq.) gives reasons for believing
also for the more
probably greater than one would gather from the official figures. See
restricted sphere of the railways Charles Watney and James A. Little (Industrial Warfare,
The Aims and Claims of Capital and Labour, 1912, pp. 50 sqq.).
449
DOMESTIC ANARCHY
tion of Victor Grayson to Parliament in 1907. After this the
extremists seemed to have lost ground, a phenomenon to which
the depression which followed the economic crisis of 1908 and
the effect produced by the policy of social reform favoured
by
Lloyd George and Churchill undoubtedly contributed. But it
soon became evident that this was no more than a truce. When
British Socialism at last acquired a daily newspaper, the
Daily
1
Herald, it was an organ of the left wing, to which, the official
party in vain opposed a rival organ, the Citizen. At the
Daily
universities and in became fashionable
certain public. schools it
for an increasing number of readers of Bernard Shaw

young men,
and Wells, to call themselves Socialists. Under the auspices of
Hyndman s Social Democratic Federation, now the Social Demo
cratic Party , after the policy of co-operation with the
official
Labour party had been given up, a Socialist Representation Com
mittee was formed in 1909 and at a Socialist
Unity Conference,
held on September 30 and October I, it was decided to found a
British Socialist party which would combine the old adherents
of Social Democracy with the youthful left wing of the Labour
2
party. The new party of doctrinaires was founded with a great
flourish of trumpets but the enthusiasm was somewhat artificial.
For after all did
Hyndman propose? To found yet another
"what
political group. But if history taught any lesson, did it not prove
that the new party would
inevitably go the same way as the
Labour party, already to all appearance discredited? The men who
were the life and soul of the new left wing were
disciples of a
different school
opposed to all political action and therefore in
harmony with the present attitude of the working class, a school
not like Marxian Socialism of German
origin but hailing from
France.
To understand the origins of this new doctrine we must go

back to the time when in 1870 two
opposing groups contested the
control of the First International, the
respective supporters of the
German, Karl Marx, and of the Russian, Bakunin. To Marx s
1
For the beginnings of the Daily Herald see
1 George Lansbury, My Life, 1928.
A. W. Humphrey, A
History of Labour Representation, 1912, pp. 182 sqq. M. Beer,
Gesckichte des Sozialismus in
England, 1913, pp. 496 sqq.
450
authoritarian Communism which looked to a centralized State to
expropriate the capitalist class, the latter opposed a freer and, they
argued, more flexible doctrine to which amongst others they
gave the name of anarchism Bakunin s movement, for a time
.
very powerful in the Latin countries, finally failed, and the anar
chist groups disintegrated into a number of isolated individuals
who, renouncing collective action of any kind, confined them
selves to individual propaganda, by book, newspaper, and also
to use their own phrase by deed that is to say, by assassination.
Nevertheless, they soon became more numerous. In France they
made their way into through the Bourses
the Bourses de Travail
into the trade unions which originally Jules Guesde had affiliated
to his orthodox Marxian party. They finally built up out of the
unions an organization based on what they termed revolutionary
1
syndicalism According to them parliamentary politics demoral
.
ized the representatives of labour, made them lose their class con
sciousness, and distracted their attention to religious, national, and
constitutional questions which had nothing to do with the sole
question in which the workers

had an interest the social question.
Militant Socialists therefore should not enter the Chamber or
hold any official post except the post of secretary to a trade union,
in which capacity they should organize in the factories direct

action against the employers, passing from dispute to dispute,
from strike to strike, at every step strengthening the workers
control and the of until the day when a
reducing profits capital
universal revolutionary strike should complete the expropriation
of the and the
capitalists
of workers organized in the Con
body
du Travail set up, unaided efforts and
their
federation Generate by
without any help from the of producers.
State, the free republic
From France lie doctrine spread to Spain and Italy, then crossed
the frontiers of the Latin countries to reach Holland, Scandinavia,
and the English-speaking world: In the United States it became
the creed of the entitled The Industrial Workers of
organization
theWorld 2 In the States the proletariat was itself divided into
.
two classes. On the one hand, there was a class of highly-paid

workers, the aristocracy of the proletariat, strongly organized in
trade unions who by amicable agreements periodically concluded
1
[From the French syndicat= Trade Union. Trs. Note.]
2 Industrial Workers of the World see the extremely erudite study by Paul
For the
Frederick Brissenden, The I.W.W. A Study of American Syndicalism, 191? (for the French
influence which however Mr. Brissenden is inclined to underestimate see pp. 272 sqqO-
451
DOMESTIC ANARCHY
had concluded a species of alliance between capital and labour.
On the other hand there was a class of unskilled labourers usually
consisting of American citizens not of Teutonic race, which was
shamelessly exploited by the employers with the connivance of
the more fortunate workers. The Industrial Workers of the
World incited the latter to form revolutionary organizations or
rather a single organization, one big union, which could launch a
frontal attack on the employers and effect the social revolution
by a
universal strike. The American workers were in constant touch with
Ireland and an Irishman named Connolly, attracted by a doctrine
calculated to appeal to a turbulent race, brought back to his native
1
country the theories of the Industrial Workers of the World.
Meanwhile these doctrines spread in Australia where a powerful
Labour party existed, which already controlled the great cities,
held office in many of the States, and hoped to gain possession of
the Commonwealth Government. Owing to its very success it
had ceased to be a revolutionary party, had found itself compelled
to subordinate the class interests of the proletariat to the interests
of Australian society as a whole, and even to repress strikes. Here
therefore the soil was favourable to the growth of syndicalist
ideas. Parliamentary government, State action, were shams, and
the strikers betrayed by the politicians naturally came to
regard
the strike as the only efficacious lawful instrument of liberation.
Here the Industrial Workers of the World came into contact with
some Englishmen, jetsam of abortive Socialist agitations who
were stranded in Australia. There were champions of the Social
Democratic Federation; there were Ben Tillett and Tom Mann,
the former originally a transport worker, the latter from the
engineering trade, who in 1889 had both taken an active part in
revolutionary strikes in London. Tillett and Mann had then been
in their way important men. Forgotten now,
they were attracted
by the prospect of making their reappearance in England armed
with the doctrine they had discovered at the antipodes. In turn
they came back to Europe. An English militant, by name Guy
Bowman, in close contact with the French Revolutionaries, who
had translated a book by Gustave Herve and was trying to intro
duce the syndicalist agitation into England, sent them to Paris to
receive orders from the leaders of the movement. So
quickly in
1
See his book, Socialism Made Easy, 1909 also his
biography by Desmond Ryan, Jatnes
Connolly, His Life, Work and Writings with a preface by H. W. Nevinson, 1924.
452
the twentieth century do ideas encircle the globe. 1 Oh November
26, 1910, at Manchester 200 delegates representing some seventy
groups, sixteen trade councils, and 60,000 workers, founded the
Manchester Syndicalist Education League which immediately
launched a campaign of propaganda by lectures, pamphlets, and
books. The Central Labour College which Dennis Hird had
founded in London in opposition to Ruskin College, which was
regarded as too moderate, provided the propaganda with the
necessary centre. Among the intelligentsia syndicalism gained as
many converts as among the manual workers. Young men of
letters, attracted to Socialism promise of emancipation but
by its
repelled by its bureaucracy and pedantry, thought they had found

in syndicalism a way out of the impasse. They read Georges Sorel,
the theorist who by adapting Bergson s philosophy gave revolu
tionary syndicalism a metaphysical foundation. They claimed for
the workers and for themselves the right to be liberated without
being civilized and made bourgeois. In their interpretation revolu

tionary syndicalism expressed, in opposition to democratic
2
nationalism, a revolt of the elan vital, the obscure forces of instinct.
3
In 1910 the situation favoured their propaganda. The strike
movement, which had been fostered by the action of the Liberals

in 1906 and the passing of the Trade Disputes Bill, had been
checked by the crisis of 1908. It was in 1910 that it first seriously
alarmed the wealthy classes. Important strikes broke out in the
coalfields of northern England and Wales, among the cotton
spinners
of Lancashire and Cheshire, and in the Clyde dockyards.
1 Tom Mann, From Single Tax to Syndicalism, 1913. Charles Watney and James A. Little,
Industrial Warfare, 1912, pp. 30-34. There is very little in Ben Tillett s Memories and
Reflections, 1931.
Stephen Reynolds, A Poor Man s House, 1909. Seems So! A Working-Class
2 View of
Politics, also his correspondence published by Harold Wright, 1923. Fabian Ware,
The
Worker and the Country, 1912.
3
For the Labour agitation in England on the eve of the Great War see in the first place
the official documents and the figures published (particularly for the great strikes of 1911
and 1912) in: Strikes and Lock-Oiits. Board of Trade (Department of Labour Statistics) Report
on and on Conciliation and Arbitration Boards in the United Kingdom in 1910 with comparative
Statistics, 1912, pp. 21 sqq. in 1912 with comparative Statistics, 1913, pp. xxi, sqq. See also
the excellent contemporary work by Charles "Watney and James A. Little, Industrial War
fare. The Aims
and Claims of Capital andLabour, 1912, Lord Askwith, Industrial Problems and
Disputes, 1920, pp. 148 sqq. (The personal
reminiscences of a man who at this time was
the chief arbitrator at the Board of Trade.) See also G. D. H. Cole, A
Short History of the
British Working-Class Movement, 1789-1929, vol. iii, 1900-1927, Chaps,
v and vi, pp. 63
sqq., also Sidney and Breatice Webb,
The History of Trade Unionism (revised edition ex
tended to 1920) 1920, Chaps, ix and x passim. W. H. Cook, The General Strike. A
Study of
Labour s Tragic in Theory and Practice, 1931, says very little about the agitation in
Weapon
England at the date with which we are concerned.
453
DOMESTIC ANARCHY
The number of strikers was the highest registered since 1893. And
it was remarked that 30 per cent of the strikers had downed tools
to protest against the use of non-union labour in other words, to
1
defend the supremacy of the unions. But it was also noteworthy
that in many instances the strike broke out spontaneously without
orders from headquarters, sometimes even against the wish of the
union officials. It was therefore a revolt not only against the
authority of capital but against the discipline of trade unionism.
And the abuse made by the miners on strike in South Wales of
the right of picketing conferred by the Act of 1906 caused general
The strike became a
consternation. lawless revolt when on the
evening of November 8 the strikers looted the village of Tony-
2
pandy. Should we also mention an incident which took place in
London two months later? At Stepney two Russian anarchists
suspected of having committed political murders were besieged

in the house where they lived. The troops were called out, there
was shooting and cannon fire, and the Home Secretary, Churchill,
came in person to take charge of the operations until finally both
anarchists perished in the burning building. In fact, this dramatic
scene was not English. It was an incident of the Russian revolution
enacted on British soil. But the Industrial Syndicalist, Tom Mann s
monthly organ, made use of it for his propaganda. He offered a
prize of two guineas for an essay of 3,000 words on the following
problem. If two men can keep 2,000 men employed and hold
them at bay in one street, how many men would be required to
defeat two or three million men, spread over the area of Great
3
Britain?
What bodies of workmen would Ben Tillett and Tom Mann on

their arrival from Australia select as -the field of this propaganda?
As we might have expected, Ben Tillett, a former dock labourer,
1
and Lock-Outs. Board of Trade (Labour Department} Report on, 1911, pp. 2-3.
Strikes
Letter from G. R. Askwittu The number of workers directly involved in strikes had been
56,380 in 1904, 67,653 in 1905. It rose in 1906 to 157,872, fell to 100,728 in 1907, rose again
to 223,909 in 1908, and fell to 170,258 in 1909. The movement of rapid increase began in
1910 with a total 01*385,085 (p. 14). If we add to the number direcdy involved in the strike,
those obliged to cease work on account of the strike of other workers, we obtain a total of
more than half a million.
a *An
orgy of naked anarchy* (The Times, November 9, 1910). For these disorders see
General the Rt. Hon. Sir Nevil Macready, Annals of an Active Life, vol. i, pp. 136 sqq.
3
The Industrial Syndicalist, vol. i, No. 6.
454
and leader of the great strike at the London docks in 1889, turned
1889 they had won a great
his attention first to the dockers. In
victory and had considerably improved their conditions of labour.

Since then however they had lost ground. There were always
three times as many men wanting work as those in employment,
and the dockers were moreover divided among thirteen rival
organizations and hampered by the competition of a host of
yellow and black workers, the scum of Asia and Africa. Ben
Tillett set himself to revive the old Dock, Wharf, Riverside, and
General Workers Union, the child of the strike of iSSp. 1 A strike
which broke out at Newport in Wales drew public attention for
the first time to the dockers grievances. The arbitration of the
Board of Trade was accepted by the officials of the union but the
men refused to accept the award. It was propitious soil for the
syndicalist propaganda, a rising of the workers against
their
leaders moderate policy. Another organization in the ports pro
vided a field of operations for the other leader of syndicalism after
the French pattern, Tom Mann. In collaboration with the Secre
2
tary of the Seamen s Union, J. Havelock Wilson, he went from
port to port to gather recruits for this still youthful organization.
Their programme, drawn up in July 1910 was to form a National
Conciliation Board which should fix a uniform standard of wages,
the minimum wage to be .4 los. a month and reform the
methods of recruiting labour in short, draw up an entire code
of corporate labour. In spite of pressure from the Board of Trade
the Shipbuilders Federation refused to negotiate with the Union s
representatives. War was declared.
The struggle quickly assumed international proportions. For in
France among the seamen from Marseilles to Dunkirk, strikes
were endemic, and citizeness Sorgue, an unwearied agitator, acted
as a link between the workers of both countries. At a congress held
in Copenhagen in August, the International Federation of Trans
port Workers, in spite of some opposition

from the German dele-
1
Ben Tillett, Dock, Wharf and General Workers Union. Comtnemorating the 1889 Dockers*
and more useful now
Strike, September 1910. Subfnem: Our Union is stronger, richer
than ever, and its future is with you, brothers and comrades, in a great battle that must
only end with the workers being masters of their destinies and that of
their respective
countries. We
must not rest until die cause of poverty is removed, and the abolition of the
capitalistsystem is complete/
2
Joseph Havelock Wilson s autobiography, My Stormy Voyage through Life.
VoL i, 1925
relates only the first part of his career, and volume ii has not been published. Moreover
the book was written by Wilson when in his bid age he had become a professed patriot
and conservative.
455
DOMESTIC ANARCHY
gates, decided in favour of an international strike of seamen. It

was to be a general strike not only of the sailors in the mercan
tile marine but of all who
played any part whatever in handling
merchandise at the ports. Tillett and Mann won their crowning
victory when in November* a National Transport Workers
Federation was formed in England comprising thirty-six unions,
unions of seamen, dockers, and carters of every description. 1
The signal for the international strike of seamen was given on
June 14, 1911. On the Continent it went unheeded but in England
nothing short of a revolutionary outbreak followed. Here we
meet again those labour disorders with which we have become
acquainted already as
intervening so strangely in the Agadir crisis.
They took everybody by surprise, It is a revolution, an employer
told a high official at the Board of Trade, the men have new
leaders, unknown before; and we don t know how to deal with
them/ And a Labour member told the same official that he could
not understand what was happening. Every one seems to have
lost their heads. 2 The strike was marked
by a violence to which
England was unaccustomed and which terrified the middle classes.
At Hull, Manchester, and Cardiff there were cases of arson and
looting and riots between the crowd and the police in which a
large number were wounded. Finally, about the first of August a
settlement seemed to have been reached,
though the employers
found themselves obliged to treat not only with the
transport
workers but with several other unions. The strikers official
pro
gramme was a national programme including the regulation of
the conditions of labour
throughout the whole of the United
Kingdom. But the issue was soon narrowed down to the question
of wages and everywhere the
employers were striving to save
what they could. Everywhere the men obtained an increase of
wages equal or almost equal to what they had asked, and often
secured in addition the recognition of their union.
But the struggle broke out again almost at once. The
port of
1
The International Socialist Congress held at Stuttgart in 1907 had
spent much time
debating a motion put forward by Gustave Herve calling upon the citizens of every
country to reply to a declaration of war from whatever quarter it might come by a mili
tary strike and an insurrection. At the next congress held at Copenhagen between August
28 and September 3, 1910, Keir Hardie, in Herve s absence advocated the
general strike
in a more restricted form characteristic of the tendencies
prevalent at the moment in the
British unions, a general strike in all industries which
provided the implements of war;
arms, munitions, and transport.
2
Lord Askwith, Industrial Problems and
Disputes, 1920, p. 149.
456
London had escaped the troubles ofJune and July since the author
ities had made haste to negotiate with the dockers and a settle
ment had been reached on July 27. But the settlement itself created
a new grievance. The wages of the dockers in the port of London
had been raised to the level of the wages received by dockers in
the employment of certain private companies. The latter then
demanded an increase of wages, and this in turn led the dockers
who had accepted the agreement of July 27 to demand a corre
sponding increase in their wages. Ben Tillett formed a strike
committee. A strike actually broke out which in the end affected
1
77,000 men. The conflagration had been rekindled. It was aggra
vated when another organization intervened.
In spite of its title the Federation did not contain all the transport
workers in the widest sense of the term transport. The four unions
of railway servants remained outside it. But among railwaymen a
discontent prevailed which the settlement of 1907, far from allay
ing, had intensified,
and which made them the natural allies of the
dockers and seamen. They complained of the composition of the
conciliation boards, from which the secretaries of the unions were
excluded. They were dissatisfied with the poor results secured by
the new method, an increase of wages insufficient to cover the rise
in the cost of living and rendered worthless by a host of devices to
which the companies had recourse and against which they were
also complained that the
powerless to defend themselves. They
procedure of the conciliation boards
was slow, complicated and
expensive, and became
ruinous when no settlement was reached
and arbitration became necessary. In 1910 the General Secretary
of the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants calculated that
the operation of the agreement of 1907 had cost the Society
.25,000 in three years, to which must be added the cost of the
Osborne case.
Moreover, as the result of the Osborne decision the railwaymen
turned towards advisers who opposed political action. Richard
1 strike in the port of London see Ben Tillett, History of

For the the LondonTransport
and not very informa
Strike,1911 (with a preface by H. Quelch). It is however a confused
tive account See further the works quoted above, p. 4.5 3 fl.
457
DOMESTIC ANARCHY
Bell, responsible for the agreement of 1907, had been replaced as
General Secretary of the Society by a man of more pugnacious
temper, J. E. Williams, who was provided
with an assistant
secretary destined to become famous and like Williams a Welsh
man, the supple J. H. Thomas. But what could they do ? The
conditions of labour had been fixed for six years: until 1914 the
unions hands were tied. Their officers could not fight unless they
were pushed into war by a revolt of their troops. This revolt had
begun in July 1910 when, in consequence of the dismissal of a
platelayer at Newcastle which they
considered unjustified, 3,000
railwaymen had gone on strike dislocating for three days all the
communications of that important industrial centre. The com
panies had won. But the unrest
had continued. Here, as among the
seamen, the French example was contagious. In October a general
strike on the French railways had created a sensation. The French
Government had broken it by mihtarizing the railway service and
mobilizing all the railwaymen. If a general strike broke out on the
. British railways, the Government could not employ this weapon.
At the beginning of August 1911 a general strike seemed very
near. In many places serious local strikes occurred, in which the
railwaymen revolted against the Conciliation Board and attemp

ted to obtain by direct action an increase of wages and a reduction
of hours. A thousand men went on strike at Liverpool. The
dockers strike which had ended ten days before broke out once
more in sympathy with the railwaymen. The employers launched
a counter-offensive and declared a lock-out of the entire union
comprising 48,000 workers. In Liverpool Mann, like Tillett in

London, took charge of operations.
The situation became serious. In England s two greatest ports
the population was threatened with famine or at least was at the
mercy of two proletarian dictators, Ben Tillett and Tom Mann.
In the wealthy quarters the price of meat doubled. To supply
children and the hospital patients with milk the vans which deli
vered it were obliged to obtain passes signed by Tillett or Mann.
Alternatively a military convoy must be obtained. It was freely
granted to anyone who asked for it. Churchill, a former soldier
who had gone over to pacifism, became once more a militarist
when, as Home Secretary, he lent his services to the Admiralty at
a moment of diplomatic tension to organize in the ports a hunt
for German spies and borrowed troops from the War Office to
458
patrol the streets of Londonand Liverpool. This military inter

vention was not always successful. If in London the dispute was
peaceably settled by an agreement concluded on August n, it
was not the same at Liverpool where the presence of the Irish
element no doubt gave the strike a particularly violent character.
One day the offices of the Shipping Federation were burnt down.
Another day the soldiers used their rifles and there were casualties.
They were to be sure local disturbances. But by the indignation
they aroused throughout the working class they provoked or
came within an ace of provoking another social crisis of a more
formidable character.
OnAugust 15 at Liverpool, the day after the affray with the
troops, the secretaries of die four railwaymen s unions acting in
concert, after protesting against the massacre declared that in
conformity with the almost universal demand of the workers
they gave the Companies twenty-four hours in which to open
negotiations for a new settlement of the questions outstanding
between themselves and their employees. Otherwise there would
be a general strike. On the i6th the Prime Minister summoned
to Londonthe four signatories of the manifesto. the iyth heOn
had an interview with the Companies official representative, as a
result of which the latter considered themselves entitled to inform
the Press that in reliance upon the assurances of protection they
had received from the Government they were prepared to guaran
tee an efficient though reduced service even in the event of a
general strike. Asquith then had an interview with the secretaries

of the four unions in which he offered to appoint a royal commis
sion to examine the men s grievances impartially and accompanied
his offer by a threat as to the consequences of a refusal. To this
1
the men replied by giving the order for a strike which was imme
diately obeyed everywhere. On
Friday morning, August 18, the
dislocation of the railway services began.
Asquith was in favour of firm resistance. And Churchill was

despatching troops in all directions without even waiting
for
the local authorities to ask for them. It was at this juncture that
1
On this point see the resolutions of the President of the Amalgamated Society of
Railway Servants in the Nottingham Guardian for August 28.
459
DOMESTIC ANARCHY
Lloyd George who had already spoken in conciliatory terms in

the House of Commons1 wrested from his colleagues authority
to open negotiations. He informed the representatives of the
companies and the railwaymen in confidence of the danger of war

and urged the bad effect which in the existing situation would be
produced by a general strike. The same evening a compromise
was reached. 2 The men agreed that the dispute should be referred
to a Commission. But on the other hand the Companies under
took to reinstate all the strikers in the positions they held before
the strike, and promised that, before the question was referred to
the Commission, the directors should meet the secretaries of the
unions, which might well seem a first step towards recognizing
the latter. Lloyd George indeed evidently encouraged the secre
taries to believe that the recognition was only a question of
weeks. If the railwaymen s
complaints of the Conciliation Boards
were justified the Commission could not fail to recommend a
system of collective agreements concluded directly with the
unions, and the Companies would be obliged to accept on the
decision of an impartial umpire what they had refused in August
to the pressure of the unions. 3
The Labour Crisis of 1911 was reaching its end. Disorders in-
1
H. of C., August 1 6, 1911. Lloyd George denied the promises alleged to have been
made to the Companies by the Prime Minister in a document read to the House by the
Labour member Wardle: *It is a very misleading thing to put down. I object to it very
much in the interest of the railway companies, the men, and the community, because it is
so important that the Government s position of strict impartiality should be preserved.
(Parliamentary Debates, Commons 1911, 5th Series, vol. xxix, pp. 2045 sqq.). H. of C.,
August 17, 1911. Lloyd George did not want the relegation of the dispute to a Commis
sion to be regarded as the Government s device to evade responsibility. The Government
of course cannot abrogate its responsibility and cannot accept the report of any Commis
sion without investigation. The responsibility, of course, must be, in the first instance, the
responsibility of the Government and then finally of the House of Commons. ... I hope
it wiH be
possible, at any rate during the next few hours, to conduct negotiations without
any exasperating intervention, either inside or outside the House. (Parl. Deb., Commons
1911, 5th Ser., vol. xxix, pp. 2196, 2198.) See the equally conciliatory words spoken by
Ramsay MacDonald (Parl. Deb., Commons 1911, 5th Ser., vol. xxix, pp. 2193 S q.q0-
2
Railway Workers United Kingdom. Terms of Settlement 19th August, i9H. (Strikes and
Lock-Outs. Board of Trade [Labour Department] Report on, 1911, pp. 168 sqq.).
s
For the railway strike see, besides the various works mentioned above p. 453 n. J.
Keir Hardie, Killing no Murder ! The Government and the Railway Strike. What Caused the
recent Railway Strike? Who Settled it? For what Purposes were the
Troops Called out? (no
date) the interesting evidence given by J. H. Thomas before the Industrial Council
November 27, 1912 (Inquiry into Industrial Agreements, Minutes of Evidence, pp. 428-9)
Rowland Kenney, Men and Rails, 1913. G. W. Alcock, Fifty Years of Railway Trade
Unionism, 1925 pp. 424 sqq. Charlotte Leubuscher, Der Arbeitskampf der Englischen Eisen-
bahner itnjahre, 1911. Mit einem einleitentenden Uberblick uber der
allgemeine Entwicklungs-
tendenz in der beutigen englischen
Arbeiterbewegung, 1913 (in the Stoats und Sozialwischen
schaftliche Forschungen by G. Schmoller and Max Sering. Heft, 174). An excellent history
prefaced by a general picture of the British labour movement about this date.
460
deed continued in Wales, where a fight took place between the
troops and railwaymen on Friday the ipth which cost seven
victims, and Jewish shops were looted in the village of Tredegar.
But order was soon restored. The Railway Commission reported
on October 1 8. The report disappointed the railwaymen. It recom
mended, it is true, that the procedure of the Conciliation Boards
should be expedited in the first place by abolishing the right of
appeal, but the competence of each board was to be strictly con
fined to disputes which concerned a particular section of the men,
so that it would be impossible
to submit claims involving the
entire suggested that their jurisdiction instead of being
staff. It
confined to wage disputes should be extended to all questions

concerning the conditions of labour but that questions of discip
lineshould remain outside their competence. It recommended
that the secretaries of the unions should sit on the boards, but it
did not recommend that the recognition of the unions, the fun
damental demand of the railwaymen since 1907, should be gran
ted. The union officials spoke of recommencing the strike. It was
in vain. The men s spirit had been broken. One of the four unions,
the engineers and firemen s, stood aloof and the three others
thought it
prudent instead of ordering a strike to take a referen
dum on the question. To this the Companies replied by an adroit
move cleverly calculated to conciliate the body of the workers.
In agreement, with the Government which authorized them in
turn to raise their rates they decided to grant a general increase
of wages. 1 The referendum went in favour of striking but the
1
In fulfilment of a promise given in August (Railway Workers) United Kingdom
Terms of Settlement ipth August 1911 (Strikes and Lock-Outs Board of Trade [Department
of Labour Statistics] Report on, 1912, p. 169). The promise was kept by an Act not passed
until the opening of 1913 2 : & 3 Geo. V., Cap. 29: An Act to amend Section One of the
Railway and Canal Traffic Act, 1894 with respect to increases or rates or charges made
for the purpose of meeting a rise in the cost of working a railway due to improved labour
conditions (Railway and Land Traffic Act, 1913). In 1907 as compensation for tie concessions
made to the railwaymen the Government had authorized the companies to pursue freely
their policy of amalgamation. The men had protested. For since the effect of this policy
would be to diminish the staff required it would involve many dismissals. The protests
were obviously unjustified. Can any corporation be forced in the interest of its employees
to employ more men than it needs ? And, in fact, when the demand for labour was so
great were many men thrown out of work as a result of this policy? In 1911 the Govern
ment empowered the railway companies to raise their rates to compensate for an increase
in wages. The port of London authorities did the same after the August strike. It amounted
to making society as a whole instead of a group of capitalists, pay for the concessions
made by the latter to their employees; from the Socialist standpoint an extremely ques
tionable solution. The Labour members protested and as their cause was that of the entire
public making use of the railways they carried an amendment restricting the operation of
the Act to five years. But the House of Lords rejected it and the Commons yielded. Sec
DOMESTIC ANARCHY
men had obviously voted only for
form s sake. When it was
in obedience to a final
held, the Companies had already decided
1 meet the union secre
command by the House of Commons to
taries in conference. A
few slight modifications of the Commis
sufficed to satisfy the latter. The men did not
2
sion s proposals
strike but accepted the agreement.
for the time. But the

The railway question was thus settled
Labour unrest continued. In December there was a strike of
dockers and carters at Dundee, and at the end of the same month
a strike of the weavers in north-east Lancashire. In January a
general strike broke

out at Glasgow. Then in March after the
and the abortive general
general strikes of transport workers,
strike on the railways there followed a general strike in the mines.
It had almost broken out in 1909 and though a settlement was
reached at the eleventh hour the hostility felt by the miners to
wards the alterations in the time-table which had followed the
introduction of the eight-hours day persisted. The syndicalist
propaganda therefore found favourable soil in
the mining districts,
particularlyin South Wales, where Dennis Hird s Central Labour
College organized a course of Socialist lectures; two young miners,

Stanton and Vernon Hartshorn, without breaking with the
Labour party kept in touch with the revolutionaries, and at the
beginning of 1912 the most sensational of the purely syndicalist
manifestoes which had appeared in England was published under
the tide The Miners Next Step The issue upon which the con
.
flict was the new question of what were known as

centred
abnormal places Was it just that the miner who was paid by
.
the piece should receive less when the lesser output of his labour
was due not to the smaller amount of work done, but to the
greater difficulty of extracting
the coal? The dispute began in a
district of the Welsh coalfield, where 10,000 miners remained on
the debates H. of C., January 30, February u, 12, 1913. H. of L., February 19, 1913
(Parliamentary Debates, Commons 1912, 5th Series, vol. xlvii, pp. 1571 sqq., vol. :dix,
pp. 756 sqq., 1333 sqq. Lords 1912-13, 5th Ser., vol. xiii, pp. 1448 sqq.).
1
H. of C., November 22, 1911 (Parl. Deb., Commons 1911, vol. xxxi, pp. 1209 sqq.)
*
Railway Conference Agreement, December n, 1911. (Strikes and Lock-Outs. Board of
Trade [Labour Department] Report on, pp. 169 sqq.).
462
strike from September 1910 to September 1911 to be defeated in
the end. But at the very moment when they surrendered, the
British National Federation of Miners decided to take up the
question
and demand on behalf of the entire federation special
wages for men working in abnormal places They had attempted
.
to discuss the matter with the Mining Association which contained

all the mine owners in the kingdom. Such a recognition of
national bargaining would however have been a step towards the

unification perhaps the eventual nationalization of the mines. The
owners therefore proposed regional negotiations and the miners
accepted their demands, but proceeded to raise the issue of the
minimum wage. The question of abnormal places would be
settled by implication if it were agreed that throughout Great
Britain,however unproductive the seam, the miners wage should
not below a certain minimum. In this way the suggestion for
fall
the equalization of wages throughout the country was again

brought forward. If the mine owners refused the miners terms
there would be a strike. And a strike we may observe in breach
of contract. For the Welsh miners were bound by contract for
more than two years, the Scottish for more than one. The union
though themselves in favour of moderate courses were
officials
1
swept away by the wave of syndicalism.
Throughout the greater part of the country the mine owners
accepted the miners terms, but in Scotland, South Wales, North
umberland, and Durham they refused, and on January 18 the
miners by 445,800 to 115,300 votes decided in favour of striking.
The solidarity of the workers was now such that half of them who
had no direct interest at stake came to the help of the other half.
Moreover, a new set of demands was now put forward by the
Miners Federation. It demanded, under pain of a strike, a general
tariff of wages drawn up for each district, no wage to be less than
five shillings for adults, two shillings for children*
The Government intervened. Four Cabinet Ministers the
Prime Minister, Sir Edward Grey, Lloyd George, and Sydney
Buxton met the representatives both of the mine owners and
the miners. Asquith submitted his proposals to both parties. The
principle of
a minimum wage was recognized. In each district
agreements would be necessary to fix that minimum
which
special
1 For the miners* strike see in addition to the works mentioned above p. 453 n.
Maurice Alfassa, La Grfae noire et VEvolution des Syndicate, 1913.

VOL vi 17 463
DOMESTIC ANARCHY
would differ in different districts. In each district a joint confer
ence might be set up on which the Government would be repre

sented, and an agreement, the representatives
if it failed to reach
of the Government would act as umpire. As in November, the
mine owners were divided, though the miners were already ask
ing more than in November, not only
the acceptance of the
abstract principle of a minimum wage but that it should be legally
fixed. The men unanimously rejected Asquith s proposals. The
strike began, affecting directly a million men, indirectly a further
million the railwaymen, for instance, and the iron workers. It
lasted a month and in contrast to the labour troubles of 1911 was
conducted peaceably. Not a single sanguinary incident occurred.
Tom Mann was imprisoned for inciting the soldiers to make
common cause with the workers against the Government; but
therewas no collision between the troops and the strikers. The
calm however was itself formidable. Finally, to escape the impasse,
the Government carried a Bill establishing a minimum wage in
the mines. provided that it should be fixed under conditions
It
prescribed in detail and varying with each class of worker, by

twenty-three joint district boards with independent chairmen.
Introduced on the ipth of March it was passed on the 29th. The
Conservative Opposition refrained from embarrassing the
Government by obstruction and allowed the Bill to pass, merely
expressing the hope that once it had become law the Government
would show itself sufficiently firm to make the working class
it.
accept
. For this was the critical issue. The new Act embodied the
proposals made by Asquith

in February, not the claims of the
miners: it contained no clause fixing a national minimum wage.
What would be the attitude of the union officials now the Act
had been passed? They evaded the difficulty by taking another
referendum of the union, and though a majority voted in favour
of continuing the strike it was so small that the officials overruled
the decision on the ground that two-thirds of the miners had not
voted for the strike. And soon they decided to raise a paean of
victory. It was surely an event of historic importance that so soon
after die excitement aroused by the dispute between the two
Houses, Parliament, instead of discussing such political questions

as Home Rule or Welsh Disestablishment had devoted its time
for two entire months to the Labour question. And if the miners
464
had not obtaiiied everything they had asked for,
they had ob
tained for the first time in the of labour
history legislation recog
nition of the principle of the minimum wage, not as in 1909 for
certain classes of workers incapable of self defence, but for the
most powerful union in the United Kingdom and in consequence
of its victorious action. The solidarity of the workers Vernon ,
Hartshorn declared on March 28, has become so firm that in less

than a week, by the stoppage of the railways and other means of
transport, we can paralyse the nation, bring the government
to knees and make it beg us to resume work on harder condi
its
tions than those that it would have declared inacceptable at the

outset/
This labour unrest, which at times verged on anarchy, was em

barrassing to the Government and the more so since it no longer
possessed the hold over the working class it once exercised
through the channel of those Members of Parliament who claimed
to be their accredited representatives. We
can picture the great
demagogue of the Cabinet, Lloyd George, struggling with diffi
cult problems of parliamentary tactics. After the important series
of measures, from the Trade Disputes Act of 1906 to the National
Insurance Act of 1911, whose only result seemed to have been to
increase the discontent of the industrial proletariat, what further
step could he take itfthe same ditection? Must he content himself

with using his diplomatic ability to intervene in the labour dis
putes which were following in rapid succession? We have seen
the brilliant success with which in August 1911 he had taken the
Prime Minister s place and prevented the railway crisis from
issuing in disaster. In March 1912, a witness depicts him, while
arbitrating in company with three of his colleagues on the coal-
miners strike, keeping conspicuously quiet and possibly keeping
5
himself in reserve for a crisis 1 He must find some new slogan,
.
turn the attention of the public to some other question and place
himself once more in the limelight. And the need became the
more pressing the more enemies he made in the course of his
stormy career. Once already he had been libelled by a journalist;
but he had prosecuted the libeller, who had made an abject apology
1 Lord Askwith, Industrial Problems and Disputes, 1920, p. 210.
465
DOMESTIC ANARCHY
and he had emerged victorious. It was very different when at the
end of 1912 after attacking so many people he found himself the
object of attack, defamed by a group of bitter foes.
They did not belong to the syndicalist group. Nevertheless,
they were fighting as free-lances on what may be termed the right

wing of the movement. The two Chesterton brothers and Hilaire
Belloc had constructed a philosophical and social system which
they defended by a lavish supply of paradoxes. The philosophical
foundation was Catholic. The two Chestertons were or would
soon be Catholics, Belloc was a born Catholic, and they empha
sized the negative aspects of their Catholicism, an equally fanatical
hatred of Protestantism and the Jews. In their eyes Protestantism
and Jewry stood for the bourgeois spirit, the spirit of big business,
and it was in their criticism of bourgeois civilization that they
joined hands with the syndicalists. Belloc had provided the latter
with useful formulas by his denunciations of the Servile System*,
the Selfridge System in which he enveloped in a common con
demnation Capitalist and Collectivist industrialism. What differ
ence did it make to the individual whether he was the slave of a
private employer of a democratic state; earned his wage as the
1
employee of a large company or of the Government? Belloc and
his friends wanted to return to the old
system of small property,
home industries, and trade guilds and they could justify their
Catholic sympathies by the fact that it was in Catholic Europe,
Ireland, and the South and West of the Continent that large-scale
industry had made least progress. They published a new weekly,
The New Witness, which aggravated die prevalent intellectual
chaos. Belloc attacked Lord Murray, who administered the Liberal
party funds, two Jewish members of the Cabinet, and Lloyd

George himself.
The great inventor, Marconi, had founded a company in
England to exploit his inventions and had offered to conclude an
agreement with the British Government for the sole right to set
up official wireless stations throughout the Empire. The Govern
ment was in a hurry to conclude the agreement at a time when
like all the other
European Governments it was making prepara-
1
Hilaire Belloc, The Servile State, 1912, with its device: *If we do not restore the Institu
tion of Property we cannot escape the Institution of
Slavery; there is no third course.*
See also G. K. Chesterton s fantastic Utopia
inspired by the same spirit, The Napoleon of
Notting Hill, 1909 and for the controversy with orthodox collectivism, Socialism and the
A
Servile State. Debate between Messrs. Hilaire Belloc
andR^nsay MacDonald, M.P., 1911.
466
tions for a war possibly imminent. It was accused of being too
hasty and there was talk of corruption. The men just mentioned
were accused, the two Jews being Sir Rufus Isaacs, the Attorney-
General, who was brother of Godfrey Isaacs, Chairman of the
British Marconi Company, and Herbert Samuel, the Postmaster-
General, who in the eyes of his detractors was guilty of the double
offence of signing the agreement and being a Jew. We shall not
enter into the details of the Marconi affair which dragged out
for several months. It is
enough to say that it provoked debates
in the House, and was submitted to a Parliamentary Committee
of Inquiry and that, if as the result of the investigation Samuel
was proved completely innocent, the others were proved to have
been guilty, if not of corruption in the strict sense, at least of
incorrect financial dealings. 1
The affair, once politically settled,
hung fire. A new agreement was made with the Marconi Com
pany more favourable to the State than the former had been.
The campaign against Lloyd George and his friends had not there
fore been fruitless. After this the country was obviously of the
opinion that it was in bad taste to continue to attack them. The
London Press refused to imitate methods of political warfare only
too fashionable, as Lloyd George himself observed on the other
side of the Channel 2 When a few months later Sir Rufus Isaacs
.
was promoted to one of the highest judicial positions in the king

dom the public does not seem to have protested. Nevertheless,
Lloyd George smarted from the attacks made upon him. For we
cannot deny that his detractors had laid a brutal finger on a sore
place in the system of democratic government. Men of the hum
blest origin rise to political power on a programme of war against
the rule of wealth and, if they become ministers, receive as such a
salary which enables them to take their place in a society based
on the inequality of wealth which they denounce. But if ever they
1
See the debates H. of C, October n, 1912; appointment of a Committee of Inquiry
(Parliamentary Debates, Commons 1912, 5th Series, vol. xlii, pp. 667 sqq.); June 18-19,
1913, Cave s motion of censure on the three politicians incriminated (ibid., 1913, 5th Ser.,
vol. liv, pp. 391 sqq., 542 sqq.), Cf. Asquith, Memories and Reflections, vol. i, pp. 207, 212.
For a good account of the Marconi affair see the article entitled Ministers and the Stock
Exchange , in the number of the Round Table for June 1913 (vol. iii, pp. 425 sqq.). The case
of Lord Murray of Elibank was the object of a special inquiry by the House of Lords (H.
of L., March 9, 1914, Parl. Deb., Lords 1914, 5th Ser M vol. xv, pp. 412 sqq.). Without
hypocrisy the Unionist opposition could scarcely have pushed the matter to extremes
against Lloyd George. In 1900 Rufiis Isaacs had defended Arthur Chamberlain when he
was accused during the Boer War of similar offences in connection with army supplies.
2 at the National Liberal
Speech Club, July 1, 1913.
467
DOMESTIC ANARCHY
should cease to be ministers how will they maintain their position?
This is the trap laid for a statesman of plebeian origin by a society
democratic in form, but plutocratic in fact. And this moral weak
ness of popular leaders who have become wealthy afforded a wel
come argument to the syndicalists, eager as they were to proclaim
the bankruptcy of politics.
What revenge could the Welsh country solicitor, convicted of

having become in his turn a capitalist, and moreover of having
made use of his political position for that purpose, take upon those
plutocrats who so often wounded by his denunciations, had at
last found an
opportunity to make their enemy suffer? At the
close of 1911 when the railway crisis was approaching its end an
Industrial Council composed half of representatives of the em
ployers and half of representatives of the unions had been formed

by the Government to arbitrate in labour disputes and try to
devise some regular method of effecting their peaceful settlement.
It was invited in
June 1912 to hold an inquiry on the latter ques
tion and reported a year later. 1 Lloyd George had promised to give
effect to its recommendations 2 but he let the matter
drop.. The
danger of the great strikes had for the moment been averted and
the idea was not calculated to arouse popular enthusiasm. He
would seem rather to have thought of raising the question of
nationalizing the railways and it was probably at his request that a
3
Royal Commission was appointed to examine the question. But
without waiting for its report and deciding whether it might be
good policy to place the question in the forefront of the Govern
ment s programme, he launched a campaign against the mono
poly of the great landlords. He had indeed made preparations for
an attack, heralded by certain clauses in the Budget of 1909, before
1
The Industrial Council Report of Inquiry into Industrial Agreements 1913 and Minutes of
Evidence taken before the Industrial Council in connection with their Inquiry into Industrial
Agreements 1913. (The answers of a hundred witnesses afford an excellent picture of the
relations between employers and men in England on the eve of the war.)
2
H. of C., July 23, 1912 (Parliamentary Debates, Commons 1912, 5th Series, vol. xli.,
pp. 1116-17).
3
A
Royal Commission to inquire into the relationship between the railway companies of Great
Britain and the State in respect of matters other than
safety of working and conditions of employment
and to report what changes, if any, are desirable in that relationship. (Appointed October 1913
with Lord Loreburn as chairman.)
468
the Marconi scandal broke out. And he never desisted from it
throughout hislong career. On this point at least a states

man, so often charged with tergiverzation, showed a persis
tence carried almost to the point of obstinacy.
He began, as Chamberlain began his campaign for tariffreform,
by forming a Committee, the Land Inquiry Committee, to collect
for the use of himself and his supporters all the necessary informa
tion about the situation of British agriculture. On the other hand,
after lengthy discussions which
occupied the greater part of 1913
he obtained the support of the Cabinet as Chamberlain had failed
to do ten years earlier when he tried to commit the official Union
ist
party to his protectionist campaign, and he unfolded his
agrarian programme in two important speeches delivered, the
first atBedford on October n, the second at Swindon on Octo
ber 22 the day on which the first volume of the Land Inquiry
Committee s report was published. What were its recommenda
tions? To understand it we must go back a quarter of a century
and seek in the experiments made in Ireland by both the great
historic parties the origin of the two programmes of agrarian
reform which confronted each other in 1913. The first possible
method of assisting the small farmers was to allow tenants to
purchase their farms with financial aid from the State and become
owners themselves. The Unionists had employed it in Ireland,
tentatively at first (Lord Ashbourne s Acts) then on a large scale
by the Land Law of 1903, which sought to parcel out the entire
arable area of the country into small independent holdings. But
even before the Unionists tackled the question in Ireland, the
Liberals, when Gladstone was Prime Minister, had tried a different
method, not making the tenants smallholders, but regulating by
law their relations with their landlords, fixing the amount of rent
payable and protecting them against unjustifiable evictions. The
method had been extended almost immediately to the small
tenants of the Scottish Highlands who were called crofters and
whose condition closely resembled that of the Irish cottiers. The
Liberal party had been faithful to this second method when in
1911 it repaired its defeat of 1907 and passed a Scottish Land Act,
5
which extended the provisions of the Crofters Act to all the

small farmers of Scotland. And at present while the Unionists to
stem the depopulation of the country districts advocated an agrar
ian policy which would settle on the land the largest possible
469
DOMESTIC ANARCHY
number of small freeholders, 1 the Liberals, affected by the in
this programme of peas
creasing influence of Socialism, rejected
ant individualism. If the land was to be purchased it must be for
the benefit of the entire community. Lloyd George proposed to
same legal protection that
the new social
give the farmer the
legislationhad given the worker in the towns, and as he proposed
to give it to the agricultural labourer by fixing a legal wage. The

execution and development of the new legislation would be the
task of a Ministry of Land which Lloyd George proposed to create
and which besides a host of other functions would take over the
work of the Board of Agriculture. This new department would
complete the revision of the land survey ordered by
the Budget
of 1909 and of which two-thirds had already been accomplished,
drain it and fit it for culti
acquire uncultivated land, plant trees,
vation, and regulate the relations between the landlord and the
farmer, between the farmer and the agricultural labourer and
even more generally the relations between landlord and tenant in
the town as well as in the country. For all the land in the United
Kingdom urban as well as rural would be under the jurisdiction
of this important department intended by Lloyd George to re
in common with
generate Britain by methods which had nothing
those of Socialist industrialism, by reviving and repopulating the
2
countryside.
Was this campaign likely to succeed? As we know, the world
war prevented its development. We can therefore only guess the
answer. But the prospects of success would not seem to have been
hopeful. In the first place, conditions were less
favourable than
ten years earlier. The farmers economic position had greatly
improved in the interval. The prices of foodstuffs had risen, in the
that prices in general had risen
first
place for the same reason
the increase in the amount of gold in circulation and secondly
because of the decline in the American supply since the United
1
For the agrarian policy of the Unionist party see Lord Lansdowne, speech at the
Westminster Palace Hotel, July 24, 1912; speech at Matlock Bath, July 21, 1913 and
the^propaganda pamphlet entitled: A Unionist Agricultural Policy, by a Group of Unionists,
1913.
2 The Land. The
Report of the Land Inquiry Committee, vol. i Rural, 1913 ; vol. ii Urban,
1914. For the question of rural estates see further the two speeches delivered by Lloyd
George Bedford on October
at u
and at Swindon on October 22, 1913 (the second out
lines hiscomplete programme) for urban estates see his reply at the Treasury on October
;
30 to a deputation of urban tenants and his speech at the Holloway Empire on November
29 and for the application of his programme to Scotland his speech at Glasgow on Feb
ruary 4, 1914-
470
States had begun to absorb its agricultural produce. 1 In the second
if Lloyd George wanted to ally the farmer and the farm
place,
labourer he had a difficult problem to solve. He must find some
means of identifying their interests. But the first thing which
struck the farmer in Lloyd George s scheme was the legal guaran
tee of a higher wage for his hands, and this was sufficient to throw
him into the arms of the landlord. In the third place, Lloyd George
might indeed win the support of a large section of the public
both of the working and the middle class by denouncing the
abuses of the landlords monopoly in the great cities he had :
already brought the subject into prominence when

he introduced
his Budget of 1909. But the problems of urban and rural landed
property were so different that it was not easy

to combine their
solution in a single scheme of reform. And finally, what was his
aim? Was
it in truth to
repopulate the countryside by bringing
the town
labourers back to the land? Utopia. As well attempt A
2
to turn back the course of a river. The utmost that could be
hoped was to check the depopulationof the countryside. To suc

ceed, Lloyd George must win the agricultural labourers. But this
dull and ignorant class, incapable of organizing except by fits and
starts,
3
could not be relied upon to save itself or even to assist
1 The
yearly average price of wheat which
had fallen to about 26 shillings a quarter
during the period 1899-1901 then rose, not again to fall
below 30 shillings during the
years which followed 1907. It was
above 435. in July 1909, above 383. in July 1912 (Com
merce and Industry. Tables and Statistics for the British Empire from 18i5 edited by "William
Page, p. 217). For the fluctuations in the price
of wheat see William Sutherland, Rural
Regeneration inEngland. A
Short Discussion of Some of the Outstanding Features of the Rural
Land Question and of the Principal Proposalsfor Reform, 1913, pp. 13-16.
*
Attached to both the old-established political parties there is an army of open-air
It fell to lot at that time (about 1914) to
my
speakers and other so-called "workers"
supervise the work of a group
of them in London. ... It appeared that the smallholdings,
the growth of cabbages and potatoes, and Wat Tyler s Rebellion, figured prominently in
their harangues. They were quite pained when I pointed out to them in the frankest ^pos-
X.U.U.X&UU, fumnrjjujrw rr */*>

wo.. *, cc* J* *"/
8
See the remarks by the American, Price Collier (England and the English, 1909, Pop.
Ed. 1911, p. 289), on the dullness which he finds incredible of the British rustic: This
at least, because he knows no such types
appeals to the stranger, the American stranger
among those of his own race at home. When he meets with stupidity
and political dis
ability, it is among the
lower classes of foreigners, but here are families who have lived
side by side perhaps for centuries, the one in the squire s house, the other in the
labourer s
cottage, yet the difference between

them mentally and politically is as great as was the
difference between the southern planter and the hands in his cotton fields
The English
inaudible and grotesquely awkward, both
man of this type is uneducated, inarticulate,
for he is always and unalter
mentally and physically. But he has his small political value,
ably for no change P With this quotation
we may compare a description whose agreement
is an
with the former is the more striking because it comes from a very different source. It
English labourer is the worst used
and the least bold
English Socialist who writes:
"The
471
DOMESTIC ANARCHY
actively those who tried to save it. Let us even suppose the im
possible, that they joined their voices to the chorus of powerful
discontent heard from the urban proletariat. The outcry of a class,
scattered and constantly diminishing in numbers, would
scarcely
be audible above the syndicalist uproar. For it was here that the
real problem lay and we must resume the
history and define the
character of the syndicalist revolt as it
developed after a series of
Labour triumphs had brought to an end the great
campaign of
strikes among the seamen, and
transport workers, railwaymen,
miners which had lasted almost a year from June 191 1 to
May 1912.
10
Two social crises, two episodes of the class war, two great
strikes
obviously syndicalist and revolutionary filled the papers
for a considerable time. Neither indeed took
place in Great
Britain. But it was a remarkable fact that both broke out in
parts
of the British Empire where everyone believed racial
animosity
to be too intense to leave room for class hatred; 1 and
yet even
there the class war raged. In South Africa there arose in
opposition
to a South African
party in whose ranks the most of prominent
the Boer leaders in the late war fraternized with their
conquerors,
a new Labour
party which mustered the workers without dis
tinction of race
English, Russian Jews, poor Boers from the
country absorbed by the Rand proletariat the against capitalist
tyranny. But if the whole truth is to be told, the movement was
inspired by stronger racial passions than it was willing to admit.
peasant in Europe It is futile to assert that the French
peasant on his own land is poorer
and works harder than the English agricultural labourer.
Though the French peasant may
be in the hands of moneylenders and
though the English smallholder may be robbed by
market salesmen and railway companies, each
possesses a dignity, a glimpse of freedom
unvisioned by the agricultural labourer/ (F. E. Green, The
Tyranny of the Countryside,
1913, p. 253.)
1
Tom Mann, Memoirs, 1915, p. 321: Early in 1914 ... I was sent to South Africa to
endeavour to weld the working classes
together, and was enthusiastically received by the
miners, the railwaymen, and others. To my
pleasurable surprise the foremost contingent
people who met me at Johannesburg Station, was a couple of
in a procession of 10,000
hundred young Dutchmen, with their trade union banner. This was a
great advance on
anything I had seen when in the same district in 1910. At that date, very few of the Dutch
Afrikanders were working in the mines, and those few would have no truck with the
Britishers. In the interval between
my two visits, economic pressure and fraternization
had brought the young Dutchmen into the industrial
field, and they liad learned the neces
sity for industrial reorganization.
472
The South African labour agitation was no clearer as to its charac
ter and aims than the agitation in five or six years before
England
against the employment of Chinese labour in the Rand mines.
The workers of the South African Labour party were protesting
against the competition of native labour, and the party s real name
should have been not the Labour but the White Labour
party*
Nevertheless this did not alter the fact that two
parties faced
each other, in each of which representatives of the two white
races, the English and Boer, worked side by side, and the strength
of the new Labour movement was suddenly revealed in the
summer of 1913 when a mining company attempted to increase
the hours of work and its employees replied by a strike which
quickly became a general strike of all the miners. There were

enough Russian Jews on the Rand to spread in this favourable
environment the current doctrines of European revolution. And
the disturbance assumed such serious proportions that troops had
to be sent to Johannesburg. On July 4 shooting took place, nine
teen persons were killed, and a hundred wounded. In reply, the
offices of an
important paper and the railway station were sacked,
and the central electric power station seized by the rioters so that
when night fell disorder reigned in a city totally deprived of light.1
A truce followed but in the following January the civil war broke
out anew. The South African railways were owned by the State.
The Government attempted to reduce the staff of railwaymen,
and the latter declared a general strike. The Government took
vigorous action, arrested the leaders before they had time
to conceit measures with the Federation of Trade Unions,
and when the Federation declared a general strike of all the
unions, took the necessary steps to break it. But the situation
remained uncertain. Not only did the new Labour party
win a majority of seats on the Transvaal Provincial Council,
but at the same time a Boer stalwart named Hertzog, uniting
Nationalist propaganda with the Socialist propaganda of the
Labour party, accused the two leaders of the South African
party,
Botha and Smuts, of betraying their race and selling
themselves to British capitalism.
Nine South African trade
unionists deported by Smuts without trial received an enthusi
astic welcome in London and no less enthusiastic was the
1 For the Rand Strike see the excellent accounts in the Round Table, September 1913,
No. 12, vol. iii, pp. 750 sqq.; December 1913, voL iv, No. 13, pp. 170 sqq.
473
DOMESTIC ANARCHY
welcome Tom Mann received from the South African
1
workers when he returned in June.
At England s very door Ireland presented the same spectacle. It
was at Belfast in 1907 that there occurred for the first time one of
those great revolutionary strikes of which England would be the
theatre a few years later. A strike of a limited number of men was
followed by a sympathetic strike of other workers. The employers
still more men out of work
replied by a lock-out which threw
and this in turn was followed by a general strike of all the workers
of the city. For an entire month the work of the port was at a
complete standstill; 10,000 soldiers policed Belfast, men were
killed and wounded. These disturbances made practically no im
pression in England. Disorder was
chronic in Ireland. Moreover,
the movement failed. The Catholic and Protestant workers were
divided too deeply to remain long united in a common pro
2
gramme of Socialist action. But die Belfast disturbances pro
duced a man who during the next few years would be the great
leader of Irish trade unionism. James Larkin, known to the Irish
crowds, more familiarly as ]im\ the local secretary of the dockers
3
union, was a fanatic of irreproachable morals who fascinated the
strikers of Belfast by his eloquence and strange appearance. He
wore long black hair, a heavy drooping moustache, a large,
broad-brimmed black hat, and a kind of black toga. After the
conclusion of the Belfast strike he broke with the British dockers
union and founded an Irish Transport "Workers Union. At the
same time he entered into relations with the thinker who provi
ded him with a creed James Connolly, who in 1 896 had attemp
ted to found an Irish Socialist Republican party had since gone to
America, where, as we have already said, he learned the doctrines
of syndicalism from the Industrial Workers of the World. Settling
1 The South African Strike (Round Table, March 1914, No. 14, vol. iv, pp. 231 sqq.).
An interesting measure in the history of strike legislation is an Act passed in 1912 by the
South African Parliament (Railway and Harbours Service Act, 1912) which provided that
railway servants who went on strike should be liable not only to dismissal with loss of
their right to promotion, but also to penalties not exceeding a fine of 50 and six months
imprisonment. But even in 1914 no attempt was made to enforce it.
*
For the Belfast Strike see Lord Askwith, Industrial Problems and Disputes, pp. 115 sqq.
See also the evidence, very incoherent however, given by J. Larkin before the Industrial
Council (Inquiry into Industrial Agreements) July 30, 1912, Minutes of Evidence, pp. 243 sqq.
*
He was, it is true, at the beginning of his career as a trade unionist sentenced to twelve
months* imprisonment for misappropriation of funds. But the witness who made this
statement in 1916 before the Royal Commission on the Rebellion in Ireland (Report i916,
Q. 1657) adds that he was released by Lord Aberdeen at the end of the three months and
that from that moment dates the influence exercised by Larkin upon Irish administration*.
474
in Dublin, Larkin and Connolly worked together to bring into
the Transport Workers Union all the men, particularly the un
skilled labourers, who were
unwilling or unable to join the exist
ing unions, and thus to found in Ireland the one big union by
whose instrumentality in the United States the Industrial Workers
of the World hoped one day to achieve their revolution. They
published their paper, the Irish Worker, a weekly which soon
possessed a circulation of 15,000. Their headquarters was Liberty
Hall, from which they issued their marching orders. Their plan of
campaign, intended to gain immediate successes, and at the same
time to impress public opinion and make recruits, was to launch
a succession of sudden strikes,
every time forcing the employers
to yield the more speedily as they were taken the more
completely
by surprise.
On
August 25, 1913, Larkin having brought the fury of the
bourgeoisie to a climax by provoking a strike of the Dublin tram
ways was arrested with four other leaders on a charge of criminal
conspiracy He was indeed immediately released with a caution,
.
but his arrest nevertheless gave rise to riots brutally repressed by

the police and troops (one person was killed) in the course of
which he was again arrested. Then the Dublin employers decided
to meet the attack by a counter-attack. While professing their
respect for the legitimate forms of trade unionism they refused
to keep in their employment any member of the Irish Transport
Workers Union since its aims were revolutionary and its methods
made regular work in Dublin impossible. To the amazement of
the British public at a juncture when the question of Home Rule
had reached a crisis Unionists and Nationalists combined against
Larkin s agitation. The leader of the Opposition was Murphy, a
wealthy capitalist, chairman of a tramway company, and director
of an important Nationalist organ, the Irish Independent. Both in
Ireland and in South Africa Socialism seemed to be outstripping
Nationalism.
The struggle lasted four months, months of pauperisation and
disorder. 1 Larkin was sentenced to seven months imprisonment,
on the charge not of conspiracy for which the penalty was more
severe but simply of seditious language, then liberated for fear of
1
For the Dublin Strike see G. D. H. Cole, A Short History of the British Working Class
Movement 1789-1927, pp. 103 sqq.; Larkinisin, The New Force in Ireland* (New States
man, September 13, 1913, p. 711); and T. M. Kettle "The Agony of Dublin* (Irish Review,
November 1913. VoL iii, pp. 441 sqq.).
475
DOMESTIC ANARCHY
an insurrection of the working class, not only in Ireland but
per
haps in Great Britain as well. For Larkin, monarch of the Dublin
George s Channel and entering into rela
proletariat, crossed St.
tionswith the English syndicalists attempted to rouse the Parlia
mentary Committee of the Trades Union Congress from its
slumbers and bring about the declaration of a general strike in
England in aid of the Irish general strike or, if that were im
possible, at least a refusal by the British transport workers and
railwaymen to handle goods coming from Ireland. With what
success? He was warmly
applauded at a number of public meet
ings, and his influence provoked sporadic outbreaks of striking in
several ports on the west coast of
England. But he failed to per
suade the Congress to issue the orders he desired and the Irish
strike, after all attempts at arbitration had failed, came to an end
at the
beginning ofJanuary. There was good reason to think that
four months conflict had done more to
spread the syndicalist
creed than the final defeat to discredit it.
II
All these manifestations which occupied

public attention were
it must be
not, recognized, in the true sense English. In the Rand
the general strike was the work of a a
cosmopolitan proletariat,
seed plot for the ideas and passions of the Continental Revolution.
In Dublin, Irish disorder gave the movement a distinctive colour.
And in Great Britain two years before, where had the most violent
disturbances occurred? In Celtic Wales and in Liverpool where
there was a host of Irish workers. We must therefore be clear as
to the nature of the obstacles which strictly English society, even
when affected by this uprising of labour, opposed to its threat of
anarchy.
We have already seen how many strikes from 1910 onwards
were anarchist in the sense that
they were revolts of the working
masses instigated by unofficial agitators against
agreements pre
viously concluded between the employers and the union officials.
To read the lamentations of the middle class one might believe
that the structure of social peace* based on
reciprocal concessions
freely accepted, hitherto the boast of British society, was a thing
of the past. In reality
nothing could be more untrue. If the number
476
of strikes in breach of contract was
increasing, the number of
collective contracts was increasing even more rapidly. And these
anarchist breaches of contract were often due to the fact that the
original contract had been badly drawn, couched in ambiguous

terms, or did not cover all the members of the union. Sir George
Askwith, the the Board of Trade, made it his
official arbitrator at
business to see that each of these disputes resulted in the conclusion

of a more satisfactory contract and therefore strengthened the
operation in England of the system of collective bargaining and
conciliation boards at the very time when it was widely believed
to be in jeopardy. 1 And in this respect the policy of the Board of
Trade would seem to have been successful. Such at any rate was
the conclusion reached by the extensive inquiry conducted by the
Industrial Council of which we have spoken above. 2 According to
an official report, at the end of 1911 293 Conciliation Boards had
been set up under the Conciliation Act of 1896. A year later there
were 297 and at the end of 1913 325. 3 On these figures, discourag
ing from his point of view, a young syndicalist commented bit
terly: There is a good deal he wrote, to be said for the view
,
that we have too much conciliation, and that a big increase in the
number of strikes would do us no harm. 4
Moreover, the syndicalist doctrine was opposed to the regula
tion of industry by the State. State interference with the unions
was acceptable only if confined to a unilateral guarantee of advan
tages to the working class. There was no objection to the Acts
establishing an eight-hour day and a minimum wage in the
mining industry, and the latter was the direct result of an agitation
conducted by the unions. But what had syndicalism to say of
the National Insurance Act which compelled the workers to con
tribute? At that very time a French law dealing with old age
pensions and based like the British on the model of Bismarck s

legislation was defeated by the obstinate resistance of both classes
directly affected the employers and the workmen assisted by
the hostility of the judges. Would not the same thing happen in
England and must not the Government expect very strong oppo-
1
Lord Askwith, Industrial Problems and Disputes, p. 129.
2
The Industrial Council, Report on Inquiry into Industrial Agreements,
1913, p. 4.
9 Conciliation
(Trade Disputes) Act, 1896. Ninth Report by the Board of Trade ofproceedings
under the Conciliation (Trade Disputes) Act, 1896, 1912, p. n. Tenth Report, 1913, p. 13.
Eleventh Report, 1914, p. 10.
4 G. D. H. The World
Cole, of Labour, 1913, p. 316.
477
DOMESTIC ANARCHY
sition to a measure which if duly put into operation would take
of 14,000,000 wage earners
fourpence a week from the pockets
and sums varying from ^1,000 to .10,000 from the pockets of
of finding the opposition
employers? It had the pleasant surprise
less than it had anticipated. Why? No doubt it was
partly due to
the zeal and displayed by the talented
slcjll officials Lloyd
George
had selected to help him in applying the Statute, but chiefly to the
almost universal docility shown by all classes of the population.
There were indeed some attempts at passive resistance by small
employers, but the example of scrupulous obedience given by the
,
heads of the great firms was soon followed. The principle of
workmen s contributions was naturally unpopular with the
masses, and their ill humour on this account explains, at least in
part, several defeats
of Liberal candidates at by-elections after
1912. But though the Labour party and the Trades Union Con
gress protested against contribution by
the workers neither ad
vised them to disobey the law and employees everywhere, if they
did it with a grumble, paid their weekly contribution.
The payment of contributions began on July 15, 1912. By
October 15,250,000 wage earners were paying their contribu
tions,
1
a proof that the kw was being fully carried out. On
January 15, 1913, the day arrived when drugs and medical treat
ment were given for the first time to* those entitled to them by
the Act. This involved the active co-operation of the doctors,
and the medical profession, which constituted a species of bour
geois trade union, was in revolt against the National Insurance
Act. But Lloyd George had made concessions which satisfied the
majority of doctors, particularly country districts and in January
1913 the British Medical Association, while continuing to protest
in principle against a measure which touched upon the honour
of the profession and was harmful to the public interest declined ,
to strike against it. Meanwhile the system of insurance against

unemployment was working with the utmost smoothness. Since
1
Lloyd George s speech at the Hotel Cecil, October 12, 1912. In 1913, 3,600,000 persons
received sickness benefit; 44,000 the special treatment provided by the Act for tuberculosis.
The total cost of benefit per week was 283,600 that is to say, for the entire year 1913,
14,224,500. (National Insurance Benefit, Return to an Order of the Honourable the House of
Commons dated 1 July, 1914; for Return showing approximately: a. The Number of Insured
Persons who received each week 1, Medical Benefit, 2, Sickness Benefit, 3, Maternity Benefit,
b. The Average Weekly Cost of such Benefit, c. The
Aggregate Cost of each Benefit per Person,
ending llth day ofJanuary 1914 and d. The Number of insured Persons who have received one
or more of these Benefits in the period ending the llth day ofJanuary,
1914).
478
the boom continued more money was being collected than spent:
when the next slump arrived, and it was scarcely to be expected
for the next two or three years, there would be an ample reserve
with which to face it. 1 We may add that by providing for the
treatment of consumptives and setting up new institutions called
schools for mothers, State aid increased every year with the most
beneficial effects on public health. 2 But beneficial or not these
undertakings were so many triumphs of State action.

Would these victories of State intervention check the growth
of the friendly societies and trade unions? On the contrary. The
State invited both to help in administering the Insurance Act. The
passing and enforcement of the Act fostered both. The friendly

societies, sopowerful already, increased their membership. And
it was the same with the trade unions. At the end of 1910 the
membership of the unions in the United Kingdom was a little less

than 2,500,000, at the end of 1911 it was a little above 3,000,000,
an increase which was no doubt due to the syndicalist propaganda.
But in 1913 the number of members almost attained 4,000,000
and in this case it is not easy to say how far the increase was due
to the progress of revolutionary syndicalism, how far to the desire
of a large number of workers to share in administering the
National Insurance Act through a union. We
are driven to the
paradoxical conclusion that during those very years in which revo

lutionary syndicalism was so vocal, co-operation between the
trade unions and the Government became closer than before.
12
A little book had been published in

1906 entitled The Restora
tion of the Gild System whose author, Arthur J. Penty, does not
In
appear to have been influenced by Continental syndicalism.
deed the term is absent from his book.
syndicalism
He was a
1
Unemployment Insurance. First Report on the proceedings of the Board of Trade under Part II
of the National Insurance Act, 1911, with Appendices, 1913 (by
W. H. Beveridge).
2
For these new developments see Christopher Addison, Politics from Within, 1911-18,
Insurance Act of 1911.
1924, vol. i, p. 29. Two Statutes were passed amending the National
i, 3 & 4 Geo. V, Cap. 37: An Act to amend Parts I and lH of the National Insurance Act,
1911 (National Insurance Act 1913). 2, 4 &5 Geo. V, Cap. 57: An Actto
amend Part H of
the National Insurance Act (National Insurance Act [Part II Amendment] Act, 1914}. But
neither the first of these which increased the sickness benefit nor the second which modi
fied in certain details the machinery of the unemployment insurance represented any
change of principle.
479
DOMESTIC ANARCHY
discipleof Ruskin and William Morris. The enemy whose mis

deeds he denounces is collectivism by which he means more
,
particularly that administrative socialism

of which the Webbs
were the protagonists. According to him the evil which afflicts
modern society is not competition, which would be an excellent
thing if it meant a rivalry in putting goods of better quality on
the market, but commercialism whose object is to increase the
producers profit by putting on the market as large a number -as
possible of manufactured articles and thus supplying the largest
possible number of consumers at a cheap price. To save the com
munity, therefore, we must devise an industrial system which
would substitute the control of the artisan for the control of the
financier and a social structure in which the producers point of
view prevails over the consumers It would be in some respects
.
guilds. It was a conservative

a return to the system of the mediaeval
Socialism, of restoration rather than revolution, but it agreed
with syndicalism in its hostility to all political actioti and the
supremacy of the bureaucratic State. When therefore about 1910
syndicalism was imported from France and began to make dis
ciples the New Age, a pioneer weekly which defended the ideas
of Penty and his group, perceived at once the advantage to be
derived from the new labour creed. In its columns i new form of
Socialism took shape called Guild Socialism The .
complicated
plan was worked out of a society in which capitalism and profit
would be eliminated but not by transforming all producers into
wage slaves of the democratic State. They would be free servants
of the guilds, independent corporations represented by a
single
co-operative assembly which would allot work and settle dis
putes. The democratic State, however, also had its place, perform
ing the non-economic functions of society,
all
political, military,
and judicial and also, according to some Guild Socialists,
guaran
teeing the consumers as such against exploitation by a combina
tion of producers. 1 The derivation of these ideas has been
sought in
the teaching of the German
jurist Gierke, presented to the British
2
public by Maitland the great historian of law. Gierke refused to
1
G. D. H. Cole, The World of Labour. A Discussion of the Present and Future of Trade
Unionism, 1913. A. R. Orage, National Guilds. An Inquiry into the Wage System and the
Way
2
out, 1914.
Political Theories of the Middle
Ages by Dr. Otto Gierke Professor of Law in the Univer
sity of Berlin, translated with an Introduction by Frederic William Maitland, LL.D.,
D.C.L. Darwin Professor of the Laws of
England in the University of Cambridge, 1900.
480
attribute to the State an absolute sovereignty which made the
rights
of subordinate associations depend upon its sufferance.
but
According to him society was composed not of individuals
of associations which were not obliged to justify their existence
to an omnipotent and jealous state. The State was simply one
association amongst others whose functions must be prescribed
and limited in relation to the latter. But there is no need to look
to Germany for the origin of a point of view so essentially English.
The Roman conception of sovereignty has never been popular
in England. Did not this Guild Socialism simply restate in another
form the liberal and anti-authoritarian doctrine of the division of
had become accus
powers which for two centuries the English
tomed to regard as the most essential feature of their political
constitution? And did it not express in the form of a modified
1
syndicalism that old spirit

of self-government, of voluntary dis
cipline, of
which the English had once been so proud and which
was still strong enough to counterbalance alike the excesses of
popular anarchy and the abuses
of governmental authority?
13
Nevertheless, the British middle class did not recover from the
alarm inspired by the labour troubles. Besides the events in South
Africa and in Ireland and their repercussion in England other in
cidents attracted the attention of the Press. Another strike of the
London dockers broke out in thesummer of 1912 though it was
a rash and ill-advised attempt which enabled the employers to
2
of the summer. In the autumn a
avenge their defeat previous
of broke out on one of the
lightning strike 6,000 railwaymen
main lines in sympathy with a comrade s dismissal for drunken
ness off duty. The Conservative Press called it the strike for the
right to get drunk. 3

And finally there was the general lock-out
1 Cf. Arthur
J. Penty,
The Restoration of the Gild System, pp. 70-1 : As to the form which
division of function
the government of the future will take, it is not improbable that the
between the Upper and the Lower Chambers will continue, with this difference that
whereas the Lower Chamber would be elected by the people in their private capacity,
... the principle
the members of the Upper Chamber would be nominated by the Gilds
be
of authority on a popular basis would be thereby established, while a balance of power
tween the various interests in the State would be automatically maintained.
2
For a good account of this strike and its failure see Charles Watney and James A.
Little Industrial Warfare and the Aims and Claims of Capital and Labour, 1912, pp. 89 sqq.
3
G. D. H. Cote, A Short History of the British .Working-Class Movement. 1189-1921, vol.
iii, pp. 92-3. G. W. Alcock, Fifty
Years ofRailway Trade Unionism, p. 459-
DOMESTIC ANARCHY
in the building trade proclaimed by the contractors in January
1914 to put an end to a succession of minor irresponsible strikes
and transformed in June into a national lock-out, which was still
in progress on August ist. There were indeed no disputes com
parable in gravity to those
which had marked the summer of 1911
and the following winter. But the figure? for 1913 showed a
greater number of strikes
than ever before and a larger number
of men affected than at any time before 191 1 1 and a still more:
was the reorganization of the unions which

disquieting feature
was being achieved in the background. England was not perhaps
on the brink of a revolution as understood on the Continent.
British labour did not revolt against patriotism in the name of
class loyalty nor did it seek to abolish the state or even capitalism.
But in the pursuit ofmore restricted objectives recognition of the
unions, increase of wages, reduction of hours it was making pre
parations by the employment of a new strategy to involveEngland
in a class war on a scale in excess of anything previously witnessed.
Imagine to make our ideas clearer we will take a concrete
instance that on a railway the platelayers, the engine drivers, the
guards, the porters, the men employed

firemen, the in the clerical
departments, and every other branch of the company s service

possess separateunions and that one of these separate unions find
ing itself unable to obtain its demands by friendly negotiation
decide to strike. Not only will the men employed in other bran
ches be unwilling to join it, it may even be impossible for them to
do so because they are bound by agreements made with the com
pany which have not yet expired. Therefore, instead of leaving
the workers to form as many minor unions as they please each
confined to a special branch and therefore unable to undertake
more than futile skirmishes, inevery industry all these unions
must be amalgamated into a single union covering the entire
industry and in a position to fight pitched battles with the em
in France by the Con
ployers. This was the strategy advocated
federation Generate du Travail. In England it appealed to many
young trade unionists and was perhaps the most attractive feature
of the French movement. These men did not call themselves
revolutionary syndicalists but simply syndicalists, adopting the
1
1,497 strikes; 516,037 workers directly affected; 688,925 workers directly or indirectly
affected. (Strikes and Lock-Outs. Board of Trade [Department of Labour Statistics] Report on
p.x.)
482
French name without its
adjective, or Industrial Unionists in
opposition to the Craft Unionists, since they advocated unions
embracing an entire industry not some special branch like the
unions of the old style. 1
There were legal obstacles to the amalgamation of several
unions in a single body, for it was necessary to secure the consent
of two-thirds of their members.2 Many unions therefore unable
to amalgamate were content with the looser bond of federation
which, while preserving the financial independence of the unions
entering the federation, united them in a common front defensive
or offensive against the employers. We
have already seen how the
foundation of the Federation of Transport Workers by Tom Mann
in 1910 marked a ttirning-point in the history of trade unionism
and paved the way for the syndicalist offensive of 1911. The
Federation of British Miners, founded in 1888, did not embrace
all the miners, since it did not include Durham, Northumber
land, Cumberland, Wales or the South of England. Nevertheless,

it
possessed a numerical strength, a prestige and an organiza
tion which enabled it to conduct the general strike of 1912 on
behalf of the entire body of miners. But trade unionism was not
content with federation. It aimed at the constitution of large
militant unions by amalgamating many small unions. In 1911
and again in 1912 the Trades Union Congress declared in favour
of this policy of amalgamation. Already in May 1912 forty-seven
unions with a total membership of 403 ,000 workers were attempt
3
ing to reduce their number to five by amalgamation. In the case
of the railwaymen this aim was achieved, or almost achieved,
when in January 1913 J. H. Thomas succeeded in uniting in a
single union, the National Union of Railwaymen, three out of
the four unions of railway servants, the engine drivers alone
refusing to join it.
1 G. D. H. Cole and W. Mellor, The Greater Unionism. With special Reference to Mining,
Building, Engineering and Shipbuilding, Transport and General Labour and to the position of the
General Federation of Trade Unions, 1913 .
39 & 40 Viet., Cap. 22 An Act to amend the Trade Union Act, 1871 (Trade Union Act*
*
:
Amendment Act) i876, Sec. 12.

3 Ironmoulders and Ironfoxmders: six unions with
30,000 members. Tailors and Gar
ment "Workers: thirteen unions with 30,000 members. Iron and Steel Workers: eight
unions with 53,000 members. Building Trades: seventeen unions with 180,000 members.
Railway "Workers: four unions with 110,000 members. (The Times, May 14, 1912.) In this
as in every other sphere Germany provided a model. In Germany, where trade unionism
was strongly organized, there were only a hundred unions as against more than 1,000 in
England.
483
DOMESTIC ANARCHY
14
The French unions were not content with advocating the
amalgamation of all the workers in a particular industry into one

militant force. They wanted to make all these federations in turn
corps of a single army commanded by
a single general staff. The
Confederation
Generate du Travail was the entire body of workers
industries but in all at
preparing a general strike not in particular
the same time for the final and complete overthrow of capitalism.
And, as we have seen, the American syndicalists dreamt of one big
union mobilizing all the workers without exception for revolu
tionary action. In Dublin, Connolly
and Larkin imitated this
strategy. In England the trade
unions were too solidly organized
for even the most visionary of revolutionaries to contemplate for
a moment such a Utopia. But might it not be possible to make
use, if not of the Trades Union Congress, at least of the General
Federation of Trade- Unions whose very name resembled that of
th^ French Confederation by transforming it into a species of exe
cutive authority to draw up lists of claims and if the
body with
employers refused them to declare strikes? Certain syndicalists
entertained the idea. 1 But if the Federation had flourished for the
last
year or two it was as an approved society for the adminis
tration of the National Insurance Act. And if it attracted to its
ranks many unskilled labourers who had not hitherto shown any
desire to enter the unions affiliated to the Congress, the attraction
was not the hope of imminent revolution but its double function
of collecting contributions and distributing sickness benefit. But
at this point a project struck root in the minds of certain active
Labour leaders, typically British in character though suggested
by the formulas of French syndicalism, and destined soon to
draw widespread attention.
In November 1911 when the railwaymen, dissatisfied with the
report of the Commission of Inquiry, were speaking of reopening
1 Tom Mann Prepare for Action (The Industrial Syndicalist, vol. i, No. I, July 1910, p.
1 8). G. D. H. Cole and W. Mellor, The Greater Unionism 1913, p. 18 The close touch now
:
existing between the Unions of General Labour and the General Federation of Trade
Unions is a hopeful sign and points the way to the realization of this central control. All
the Unions must come into the General Federation, the T.U.C. must become its mouth
piece and the Parliamentary Committee must become a committee of the General
Federation. Cf. Articles by the same writers "The Sympathetic Strike. Labour s New
"Weapon and the Way to use it* (Daily Herald, May 5, 1914). "The Real Solidarity of
Labour (Daily Herald, June 23, 1914).
484
the strike, the miners suggested to them a species of alliance, an
agreement to strike in concert and achieve their respective aims
at thesame time. So long as the dispute continued, negotiations
were carried on. 1
But the railwaymen did not strike after all, and
the miners fought alone. Two years later in October 1913 the
miners at their annual congress at Scarborough did not get beyond
vague suggestions of a general strike, but in December when a
special congress of
the trade unions met to discuss the help to be
given to the Dublin strikers, the miners leader, Smillie, proposed

on behalf of his union a formal alliance of the miners, railwaymen,
and transport workers for common action. These three bodies
the miners, railwaymen, and transport workers had been the
three militant bodies in 1911 and 1912. Though they did not
constitute a majority of the British proletariat, they were never
theless a most formidable host. They numbered more than
2,000,000 workers, of whom 1,300,000 were union members.

And since their work was of such a nature that if in obedience to
the word of command they declared war on the employers, the
whole of industry would be deprived of coal, and the entire
country of food. As a weapon of intimidation a strike of these
three bodies would be equivalent to a general strike.
The suggestion was taken up instantly. The reasons for its
success are plain. In the first place it enabled the masses to imitate
the action taken in South Africa and above all in Ireland. And at
the same time it satisfied the desire of certain leaders, more moder
ate in the sense that they were more methodical, to guide the
agitation of the extremists into a practicable channel. The infec

tion of the Dublin strike had produced a number of sporadic
strikes, costly and barren. Could not these be prevented by put
ting before the stalwarts the hope of struggle

a on a grander scale
and more decisive? Moreover, some of the railwaymen s leaders,
2
1
M. Alfassa. La Greve noire et revolution des sytidicats en Angleterre, p. 25.
2
To understand the views which prevailed among the officials of the Triple Alliance see
J. Havelock Wilson s reply toa revolutionary manifesto issued by J. Larkin, November 22,
1913 :
years the Sailors and Firemen s Union i.e., the Dublin
Over two branch has
been subject absolutely to the control of James Larkin. We
have been involved contin
uously in disputes without any reference to or consultation
of the governing body of our
union, and I have personally entered many protests against the way in which the business
has been conducted ; also J. H. Thomas speech to a meeting of railwaymen on November
23 : Because of what the British trade union movement had done, and was prepared to do,
in defence of the basic principle of combination, it was not to be assumed that the leaders
in England were to be stampeded into a certain course of action. . . While they insisted
.
on the companies observing agreements, the men must observe the same code of honour
(The Times, November 24, 1913)-
485
DOMESTIC ANARCHY
J. H. Thomas among them, even more prudent than the former,
merely hoped that when the existing agreement expired it would
be renewed on terms more acceptable to the workers if they
hung
over the directors heads the threat of a general strike of the three
bodies. However that may
be, sixty-one delegates representing
300,000 railwaymen, 800,000 miners, and 250,000 transport
workers met in London and appointed a Sub-Committee to
draw up a scheme. It was submitted on
June 4 to the governing
bodies of the three groups for their examination. It
proposed to
set up a common
Advisory Council for the three bodies, with
authority to formulate their demands so that if they were not
accepted three strikes would be declared simultaneously. All
agreements as to wages and conditions of labour were to be for
short periods and to terminate on the same date so as to make a
simultaneous strike possible. And in face of hostile action
by the
employers or Parliament the three bodies should be ready to take
concerted measures. This did not amount to a
regular constitution
in the strict sense of the term it was a draft scheme for
merely
discussion by thethree organizations. But the fact remained that
the Triple Industrial Affiance, as it would soon be called, had been
founded and that if on December i the
railwaymen did not obtain
from the Companies the concessions for which
they were asking,
the country was faced with the of a strike of 2,000,000
prospect
allied workmen in a
position to involve its entire industry in stag
nation and chaos. On
July 17, 1914, Lloyd George, addressing an
audience of city financiers and merchants, admitted the
gravity of
the threat which
hung over the nation. He would have liked to
express his confidence that the crisis would be overcome like so
many others in the past. If however the insurrection of labour
should unhappily coincide with the Irish rebellion which as we
every one feared, the situation will be the gravest with
shall see
which any government has had to deal for centuries .
II THE FEMINIST REVOLT

i
We have given one explanation of the fact that five years after
the Liberal
victory of 1906 the British franchise had not yet been
rendered fully democratic and there seemed little
prospect of the
486
THE FEMINIST REVOLT
reform in the near future. It was the indifference of the proletariat
which did not seek in political action the weapon it required
to achieve its purposes. But this was not the only reason. The
Liberal Cabinet found other obstacles in its path when it attemp
ted to carry a measure extending the franchise. Granted it had the
boldness to introduce universal suffrage was it to be confined to
one sex alone? The restriction was already opposed by a sufficient
number of Members of Parliament to obstruct any measure which
ignored the political claims of women. Some of our readers may
be surprised that among the problems which embarrassed the
LiberalGovernment during the years immediately preceding 1914
we attach such importance to the question of female suffrage.
They have evidently forgotten the strange agitation carried on

twenty years ago by English women to compel their enfranchise
ment. These women refused to regard as a genuine democracy a
form of government which reserved to the male sex the double
privilege of electing and being elected to Parliament. Against this
masculine tyranny they organised a revolutionary agitation with
out parallel in any other European country. Therefore, while in
the syndicalist movement something of French and Latin anar
chism invaded England, there sprang up a distinctive form of
anarchy, specifically English. If however this suffragist movement,
was termed, broke out suddenly at this juncture, the way had
as it
been paved by a long campaign for the emancipation of women.
We must briefly relate its
history and describe its character, since
at this point it enters the main stream of British political history.
Why did women demand emancipation? And why in England
more than in any other country? The philosophy of historical
materialism, as formulated by Marx, suggests an answer plausible
at first sight. Capitalism had flung a host of women and children
into the new factories of northern England. Its motive was simply
the accumulation of wealth. Women were more amenable to
discipline and their labour was cheaper. Nevertheless, automatic
ally and unconsciously it was promoting their emancipation. It
was breaking down the exclusive and rigid principles of the
traditional patriarchalism and enfranchising women, in as much
as it took them from the domestic hearth and incorporated them
in a wider group, which in the long run would prove less oppres
sive to its members when the machine had been placed at the
service of the workers instead ofthe capitalists who exploited them.
487
DOMESTIC ANARCHY
Nevertheless, it is doubtful whether the industrial revolution
and the factory system played the important part in the history of
modern feminism which Marx ascribed to them. must not We
imagine that these English girls, whom
the official reports depict
working long hours almost naked, mingled promiscuously with

their male fellow workers in the hot and humid atmosphere of
the cotton mills or in the darkness of the mines, were therefore
at least emancipated from the control of their parents or husbands.
To the latter they represented extra wages and only too often
were compelled to take the hardest labour off the men s shoulders.
When women were forbidden by law to work in mines, whole
families of miners emigrated in search of an industry where the
labourer could make his wife and children wage earners. When
the law was content with limiting women s hours of work the
male workers accepted the restriction only as the one lever they
could employ to shorten their own hours. In either case the new
at a period when the dominant Liberalism
legislation was possible
was bitterly hostile to any legal regulation of adult labour, only
because it was supported by a public opinion which regarded the
woman as physically and intellectually man s inferior and entitled
for that reason alone to the protection of the law which placed
her in the same category as the child, treated her as a minor, and
1
sought to bring her back from the factory to the home. In 1844
1
H. of C, March 15, 1844, Lord Ashley s speech: The females not only perform the
labour but occupy the places of men; they are forming various clubs and associations and
gradually acquiring all those privileges which are held to be the proper portion of the
male sex. . . What is the ground on which the woman says that she will pay no attention
.
to her duties, nor give the obedience which is owing to her husband ? Because on her de
volves the labour which ought to fall to his share/ (Parliamentary Debate.*, 3rd Series, vol.
Ixxiii, p. 1096). It has been pointed out that the proportion of women to men employed
in the textile industry before the industrial revolution was the same as after it. Even if this
is the case, as a result of the enormously rapid growth of the industry the actual if not the
relative number of women employed increased at a rate equally rapid. It has also been
pointed out that the opponents of the factory system seriously exaggerated the number
of married women employed in the Lancashire mills, that the miners sent only their
daughters into the factory, and that in principle women left it on marriage. Possibly,
but the mistake figured nevertheless among the arguments, by which the philanthropists
persuaded Parliament, and moreover it was not only married women but young girls
whom the middle-class Utopians wished to remove from the factories. For the reservations
we have just discussed see Ivy Pinchbeck s excellent book, Women Workers and the Indus
trial Revolution 1750-1850* 1930 for British Factory legislation in so far as it affected
women see Women under the Factory Acts, Part I, Position of the Employer. Part II, Position
of the Employed by Nora Vynne and Helen Blackburn. With the assistance of H. W. AHa-
son, M.A., Solicitor on certain Technical Points of Law 1903. For the effect of the legisla
tion on the number of women employed in industry and the nature of their work see A
Study of the Factors which have operated in the Past and those which are operating now to deter
mine the distribution of Women in Industry. Presented by the Secretary of State for the Home
Department by Command of His Majesty. December 1929. 1930.
488
THE FEMINIST REVOLT
Lord Brougham, arguing against the legal regulation of women s
work factories, appealed to the principles of Liberal orthodoxy:
in
Cannot a woman make a bargain? Cannot a woman look after
her own interests? Is not a woman a being capable of understand
ing those interests, of saying whether or not she has stamina and
1
strength to work? Thirty years later these arguments had by no
means lost their power to convince British Members of Parlia
ment. During the seventies, at first under Gladstone s Liberal
Cabinet, then under the Conservative administration of Lord
Beaconsfield, the opposition of the orthodox Liberals prevented
reinforcement of the legislation protecting the labour of women
in factories and mines and its extension to domestic industries,
and this successful opposition came from the pioneers of English
feminism 2 who objected to a system of legal protection as degra
ding to their sex. The years passed by; we have reached the
3
threshold of the twentieth century, the old Liberalism is on its

deathbed and the feminists have accepted Socialism of a more or
1
H. of L., May 20, 1844 (Parliamentary Debates, 3rd Series, vol. bodv, p. 1315).
2
The term of course had not yet been invented. Indeed it is a curious fact that if the
theory is older in England than on the Continent the name is of French origin,
in current
use since 1895. That year a Revue Feministe appeared for the first time in Paris (Mmc
Avril de Sainte-Croix, LeFtminisme 1907, p. 137) and a Belgian quarterly already in exis
tence for three years, La Ligue, Organe beige dii Droit des Femmes devoted a final paragraph
in each number to the Mouvement Ftministe* . In 1901 the New English Dictionary contains
indeed the two words Feminism and Feminist (the latter is labelled rare) but with
meanings very different from those we attach to them. We
have not come across the word
in the columns of The Times before 1908 (The Times, June 3, 1908) and then in connection
with the feminist movement in France. As late as May 7, 1910 The Times uses the form
Femininism .
3
[Barbara Leigh Smith] A Brief Summary in plain the most important Laws
Language of
concerning Women together with a few Observations thereon,1854, p. 13: Philosophical
thinkers have generally come to the conclusion that the tendency of progress is gradually
to dispense with law that is to say, as each individual man becomes unto himself a law,
less external restraint is necessary and women, more than any other members of the com
o
munity, suffer from over legislation. Factory and Workshops Acts Commission. Report
the Commissioners appointed to enquire into the working oj the Factory and Workshops Acts, with
a view to their Consolidation and Amendment; together with the Minutes of Evidence Appendix
and Index, vol. i, Minutes of Evidence, pp. 337 sqq.: Resolutions passed at a meeting of
women: That this meeting fully recognizing the hardships endured by many women
of opinion that legislative
engaged in laborious and unsuitable occupations is nevertheless
enactments placing restrictions on their employment, though they in some instances
apparently palliate, do not overcome the evils they intend to remedy, but rather to
_tend
the entire removal of all existing restrictions/
perpetuate them and it therefore advocates
See Professor Fawcett s speeches in the House of Commons, H. of C, May 6, June n,
vol. ccxix, pp. 1421 sqq.;
June 23, 1874 (Parl Deb., 3rd Ser., vol. ccxviii, pp. 1801-2;
vol. ccxx, pp. 314 sqq.). February 21, 1878 (ibid., vol. ccxxxviii, pp. 106 sqq., 115,
of the
124 sqq., 308, 311, 548, 596, 603, 610-11, 612). See also for this opposition
female labour Ray Strachey The Cause . .
pioneers of feminism to legislation regulating
.
1928, pp. 234-<5. Beatrice Potter The Lords and the Sweating System* (Nineteenth Century,
June *i 890, vol. xxvii, pp. 899). G. D. H. Cole, A Short History of the British Working Class
Movement 1789-1927, vol. ii, pp. 126-7.
489
DOMESTIC ANARCHY
less Radical description. But protests are still raised against any
legislation which does not place
men and women on a footing of
absolute equality, whether it is question of restricting the labour
a
of women in laundries and dressmaking,1 or making their em
ployment on the surface work of mines illegal as well as their
employment in the In 1908 John Burns attempted to
mine itself.
carry the latter reform but was defeated by the opposition of

women. 2 The history of British Factory Legislation therefore pre
sents an of paradox. In the middle of the nineteenth century
air
those who were seeking toregulate the conditions of male labour
in the factories adopted a circuitous route and proposed the regu
lation of women s labour alone. Now when the exploitation of
women in certain branches of industry presented a spectacle too
glaringly scandalous to be tolerated and the law was compelled
to intervene, Parliament could protect the women only by pro
tecting at the same time the workers of both sexes, as was exem
plified by the Trade Boards Act of 1909.
The paradox however is a proof that feminism owed its birth

to influences not directly connected with the industrial revolu
tion. The historian of feminism must not depict women driven
against their will into the factories by the greed of manufacturers

and then emancipated in their employers despite as a result of
the common conditions which the factory system enforced on
both sexes. The majority of trade unions contained no women,
and where women were members, as in the cotton industry, they
neither secured nor demanded access to the executive. 3 There
were no feminine trade unions, or if one or two had come into
being their existence was artificial and precarious. Advanced ideas
of eighteenth century enlightenment, the philosophy of the
French revolution, the revival of these ideas and this philosophy
1
Jessie Boucherett, Helen Blackburn, and some Others, The Condition of Working
Women and the Factory Acts, 1896, p. 50.
2
Ibid., p. 53. Annie Kenncy, Memories of a Militant, pp. 130 sqq.
*
H. of C, July 12, 1910, Winston Churchill s speech: "The Amalgamated Association
of Card-Room and Blowing-Room Operatives have a membership of 45,000. Of these
35,200 are women and 9,800 men. The association has an executive of 10 members. Not a
single woman had been elected at the time I refer to, to serve on die executive* (Parliamen
tary Debates, Commons 1910, 5th Series, vol. xix, p. 222).
490
THE FEMINIST REVOLT
in the great individualist and liberal movement which after
years of stagnation marked the years around 1860 these

are
the sources from which was derived the impulse which
drove women to claim equality with men in the factory and
the office, in the liberal professions and in public life. The origin
of the movement was intellectual not economic, bourgeois not
proletarian.
The first important legislative victory won by the champions of
the emancipation of women was the passing in 1857 of the Matri
monial Causes Act, in the teeth of a bitter opposition from the
Church of England of which Gladstone made himself the mouth
1 law
piece and thanks to Palmerston s
support. According to the
as it existed previously not only was the married woman enslaved
to her husband or rather, to use Blackstone s words, absorbed,
incorporated into his person, but it was in principle impossible
for her to regain her freedom by divorce. The marriage bond
could indeed be partially or completely broken in two ways. But
neither of these amounted to divorce in the modern sense of the
term. Both the partial and the complete rupture were determined
by the Canon Law and were pronounced by the ecclesiastical
courts. The former was (from bed and
divorce a mensa et toro
board), what we now call separation of person and property

though the separation of property was not as complete as one
might have expected. The latter a divorce a vinculo matrimonii was
a declaration of nullity. The marriage was not dissolved but
declared after inquiry null and void from the beginning For, as .
Blackstone explains the canon law, which the common law

follows in this case, deems so highly and with such mysterious
reverence of the nuptial tie, that it will not allow it to be unloosed
2
for any cause whatever, that comes after the union is made The .
rule admitted only one exception. It had been devised by hus

bands of the class, as they were by the fetters of
governing galled
a matrimonial code which if strictly applied did not permit them
to divorce even an unfaithful wife. The British Parliament made
use of its sovereignty to override the prohibitions of Canon Law
and by a private Bill that is to say, a measure applicable only
1
20 & 21 Viet., Cap. 85: An Act to amend the Law relating to Divorce and Matri
monial Causes in England, To which must be added a Statute passed the following year
(1858) : 21 &
22 Viet,, Cap. 108 : An Act to amend the Act of the Twentieth and Twenty-
first Victoria, Cap. Eighty-five.
2
IComm., 441-
491
DOMESTIC ANARCHY
passed in due form by both Houses,

to the individual case 1
declare a particular marriage dissolved and the parties free to re

marry. But the procedure was extremely costly. Only the very
2
wealthy could obtain a Divorce Bill. All this was altered by the
Act of 1857.
The Act transferred matrimonial causes from the Church
Courts to a new
civil court composed of the Lord Chancellor,
one of the Chief Justices, and an ecclesiastical judge. This court
would decide whether it should grant what the old canon law
called divorce a mensa et toro and which would be called in future
a judicial separation or what was now called simply divorce, not
a declaration of nullity but the dissolution of the marriage bond
for acts committed subsequent to marriage. In the case of the wife
adultery would be a sufficient ground. In the case of the husband

bigamy with a married woman, an unnatural offence,
incest, rape,
or adultery accompanied by cruelty or desertion was required.
A clause which forbade a wife divorced for adultery to
marry
her lover was subsequently repealed. A
wife who had obtained
a judicial separation was placed for the first time in the position
of a feme sole that is to say, was given full enjoyment of her civil
rights,the right to enter into contracts and bring civil actions, and
a deserted wife
might under certain circumstances be placed in
the same position.
The mere fact that the jurisdiction in matrimonial causes was
transferred from an ecclesiastical to acivil court
possessed a
momentous significance. It meant that marriage had lost that
quality of semi-religious mystery of which Blackstone spoke.
In future it would be a mere civil contract. Could it then like
other civil contracts be dissolved at the
pleasure of the contracting
parties? Far from it. For in the first place it was only in a small
number of cases strictly defined by law that the new judges could
after due investigation dissolve the marriage contract and in the
second place, the Act of 1857 did not
place the two contracting
parties on an equal footing; simple adultery which gave the hus-
1
In reality by the Lords alone. When the Bill was sent down to the House of Commons
from the Upper House in which it had been first introduced it was
regularly passed with
out debate.
2
The husband must take the following steps, i. He must
bring a suit at the Assizes
wife and her lover for what English law called criminal conversation*. 2. If he
against^his
won he must obtain a decree of separation from an ecclesiastical court. 3. The
his suit
decree secured, he must obtain from the House of Lords the Bill which would
private
effectively set him tree.
492
THE FEMINIST REVOLT
band the right to a divorce did not give it to the wife. The new
legislation had, it is true, made divorce less aristocratic, for it
had made cheaper. It no longer cost
it 200 and often far more
to obtain as in the days when a private Bill was required. In future
it would not cost more than .60 at most, often .40 or even 30
and legal aid might be given to a poor suitor. 1 But there was only
one tribunal competent to grant divorces, and it was. fixed in
London. How enormously therefore the cost was increased when
the suitor lived in a remote district and in addition to the ordinary
costs must defray the expense of travel to London, and lodging
there, not to speak of the cost of bringing up witnesses If divorce !
was no longer the exclusive privilege of the enormously wealthy,

it was reserved for the rich and for the inhabitants of London and
the home counties.

We might therefore have expected that under the pressure of
the same moral which had led to the Act of 1857 the legis
forces
lation concerning divorce would have undergone important
modifications during the next half century. In fact, hardly any
alteration was made. In 1878 a husband s aggravated assault upon
2
his wife was declared a ground for judicial separation. But this
was all. A
lavish use of simple separations summarily pronounced
by the Justices of the Peace

was the expedient by which the un
altered rigour of the divorce law was rendered more tolerable.
But it was an expedient which presented serious drawbacks.
Countless the poorer classes were legally broken
homes among
up with no of replacing them by new. A host of
ille
possibility
unions was the inevitable result of a code which made
gitimate
divorce too difficult, particularly for the poor, and separation on
the other hand perhaps too easy. Complaints were raised. A
a reform of the divorce law. It
society was founded to secure
demanded and obtained though not until 1909 the appoint
ment of a Royal Commission of inquiry. The Commission held
seventy-one sittings, fifty-six of which were
devoted to taking
evidence and 246 witnesses were heard. It unanimously reported
in favour of making the grounds of divorce the same for the wife
as for the husband and a large increase in the grounds of nullity.
1 Mr. Mus-
Royal Commission on Divorce and Matrimonial Causes, February 25, 1910.
grave s evidence. (Minutes of Evidence, vol. i, pp.
10 sqq.), also John Galsworthy,A
Commentary, pp. 243 sqq.
41 Viet., Cap. 19: An Act to amend the Matrimonial Causes Act. (MatrimonialCauses
3
Act, 1878.)
493
DOMESTIC ANARCHY
With equal unanimity it recommended that
the high court should
be empowered to appoint deputies to bring divorce within the
reach of the poor in every part of the country, and that restric
tions should be placed upon the publicity of proceedings and their
publication in the Press. The majority further recommended that

the grounds for divorce should be enlarged, and besides adultery
should include prolonged desertion, cruelty, madness, habitual
drunkenness, and imprisonment for life in commutation of a death
sentence. 1 But neither the Government nor Parliament had time
to take these proposals into consideration. The British divorce law
remained what it was when the twentieth century opened. The
movement for the emancipation of women followed other paths.
To facilitate the dissolution of the marriage bond was to eman

cipate the woman in as much as it made it easier for her to escape
from a union in which she played the part of prisoner or slave.
But could not her freedom also be secured by improving her
legal position in marriage itself? To give effect to the principle
that the husband and wife are legally a single person and the
per
sonality of the womanincorporated into her husband s, English
common law almost wholly denied a married woman the right
to hold property. Her personal estate became the husband s pro
perty by the fact of marriage. And even over her real estate he
possessed a large number of rights and he enjoyed an unrestricted
right to the income derived from it. If injured by a third party
the wife could bring an action only with her husband s consent
and in his name as well as her own. In the latter half of the nine
teenth century such provisions necessarily seemed anomalous.
They had -in fact survived so long only because a number of
expedients had effected a compromise between the rigour of the

law and the demands of real life. The father who shrank from sur
rendering his daughter s fortune his own after all to the caprice
of a son-in-law could make in her favour what the English law
called a settlement, drawn up according to the rules of equity to
1
Royal Commission on Divorce and Matrimonial Causes Report, November 2, 1912,
Mimetes of Evidence, 3 vols. and Appetidices 1912.
494
THE FEMINIST REVOLT
correct the common law Nevertheless, since the system had
.
1
been devised not so much to protect the wife as her patrimony it

involved a host of complications which did not make for her
pecuniary independence. And even so it was expensive and out
of the reach of people of small means. When the latter by the
pressure they exercised upon the wealthy classes obtained succes
sive and considerable extensions of the franchise, how could Par
liament avoid taking action to give poorer women something
analogous to what die jurisprudence of equity had secured for
their wealthier sisters?
It was in fact a reform which the
champions of the emancipa
tion of women
had pressed upon Parliament even before the
Matrimonial Causes Act was passed in 1857. The passing of that
Act proved at first detrimental to their cause. What reason was
there to commiserate the lot of the married woman when, if her
case really deserved pity, it had been made easier for her to obtain
her freedom? Nevertheless, the anomaly remained flagrant and
too obviously out of harmony with the ethics of the period. The
consumers co-operative societies, it was noticed, paid their divi
dends to married women of the working ckss as if they were the
private property of the latter and the public opinion of the prole
tariat accepted a practice which had no legal justification. Custom
also allowed a married woman to conduct a business as if, in
spite of her marriage, she possessed an independent juridical per

sonality. If she became bankrupt were not her creditors defrauded
by a law which declared her financially irresponsible unless it
could be proved that she had been her husband s agent acting
under his orders ? 2 A succession of Married Women s Property
Acts were passed which within a few years profqundly trans
formed English law.
An Act passed in iSyo, 3 and completed by an Act passed four
years later gave a married woman a right of property in any
4
1 The courts of
equity could even compel the husband if he claimed a property in his
wife s name to settle part of it on her, provided the property in question was not worth
less than 200. (B. L. Smith, Brief Summary, p. <5.)
2 For the
problem to be solved see the interesting debates in both Houses during the
session of 1869; H. of C., April 14, July 21, 1869, H. of L., July 30, 1869 (Parliamentary
Debates, 3rd Series, vol. cxcv, pp. 760 sqq., vol. cxcviii, pp. 402 sqq., 979).
*
33 & 34. Viet., Cap. 93 An Act to amend the law relating to the Property
: of Married
"Women (Married Women s Property Act, 1870).
4
37 & 38 Viet,, Cap. 50: An Act to amend the Married Women s Property Act, 1870
(Married Women s Property Act [1870] Amendment Act, 1874). The Scotch law was re
formed on similar lines by two Statutes 40 &
41 Viet., Cap. 29 : An Act for the Protection
VOL vi IB .
495
DOMESTIC ANARCHY
personal gain made since marriage, investments made with the

produce of her work, and all bequests. In respect of the property
thus declared her separate estate she could take legal action in her
own name. The Act of I8821 was at once a Statute of consolida
tion which united in a single measure the two Acts of 1870 and
1874, and a new measure which extended the application of the
principles laid down by the Act of 1870. The latter Statute had
been in fact that remnant of a far more radical Bill passed by the
Commons but mutilated by the Lords. Twelve years later, the
House of Lords passed without debate a Statute which enacted
that the entire property of a married woman, both that which she
possessed at the time of marriage and that which she obtained

from any source after marriage, should be as much her property
as if it had been settled upon her. Her liberty was restricted on one
point alone, and the restriction was in her own interest. Settle
ments were respected by the new Act and those who made them
were entitled to protect a married woman against her own weak
ness and make it impossible for her to alienate under
pressure from
her husband the capital settled upon her. This fundamental
Statute of 1882 has been completed in more or less
important
2 3
respects by four Statutes, passed respectively in i884, iSps,
5
1907* and 1908. But by 1882 a legal development may be regar
ded as in its main features complete which for speed is probably
unequalled outside periods of violent revolution. Before 1870 a
married woman in England, in the poorer classes at least, was
subject to a legal tutelage of almost iron rigour. Twelve years
later separateproperty had become the normal condition of mar
ried people and a wife enjoyed a freedom unknown in
any other
country. In this respect English law amazed, we might almost say,
shocked the jurists of the Continent. 6
of the Property of Married Women in Scotland (Married Women s

Property [Scotland] Ace,
1877) and 44 & 45 Viet., Cap. 21: An Act for the Amendment of the Law regarding
Property of Married Women in Scotland (Married Women s Property [Scotland] Act, 1881).
45 & 46 Viet., Cap. 75 An Act to consolidate and amend the~Acts relating to the
1
:
Property of Married Women (Married Women s Property Act, 1882).

2
47 Viet., Cap. 14: An Act to amend the sixteenth section of the Married Women s
Property Act, 1882 (Married Women s Property Act, 1884).
*
56 &
57 Viet., Cap. 63 : An Act to amend the Married Women s Property Act, 1882
(Married Women s Property Act, 1893).
4
7 Edw. 7, Cap. 18: An Act to amend the Married Women s Property Act, 1882
(Married Women s Property Act, 1907).
5 8
Edw. 7, Cap. 27: An Act to render Married Women with a
separate Estate liable for
the support of their Parents (Married Women s
*
Property Act, 1908).
For this legislation see Emile Boutmy, Essai d une Psychologic
politique du Peuple,
496
THE FEMINIST REVOLT
The English matrimonial code underwent further modifica
tions during the half century which preceded the Great War. The
wife s refusal to return to her home was no longer regarded as an
1 and the law deprived
offence punishable with imprisonment,
the husband of his right to confine a wife who refused to live with
him. 2 The husband was no longer permitted to deprive his wife
3
by testament of the guardianship of her children. The procedure 4
by which a deserted wife could obtain alimony was made easier.
And we may mention in passing the permission at last granted
in 1907 to marry a deceased wife s sister. What is extraordinary
5
is the survival to that late date of the old prohibition of canon law
and the opposition to the reform organized by the Anglican High

Church party under the leadership of Lord Salisbury s two sons,
Lord Robert and Lord Hugh Cecil. It is of greater interest to
notice that the Labour members introduced into the Workmen s
an increase of
Compensation Act an amendment providing that
pension might be claimed for support of illegitimate children
or grandparents as though the relation
by their maternal parents 6
arose out of a lawful marriage. Thus proletarian
ship in question
morals demanded a sort of indirect legalization of the free union.
siecle 1901, pp. 311-2. A. V. Dicey, Lectures on the Relation between Law
au XIXe
anglais
Opinion in England during the nineteenth century, 1905, pp. 369 sqq. Ray Strachey,
and Public
The Cause: A
short History of the Women s Movement in Great Britain, 1928, pp. 73 7^, 272
sqq.The feminists however were not satisfied. They demanded that part of the husband s
income should be regarded as belonging to the wife as a wage for the work she performed
in thehome. See the eighth of the nine Bills drafted by Lady Maclaren under the common
titleof The Women s Charter and introduced in the House of Commons by Sir Charles
Maclaren on March 14, 1910.
1
47 &
48 Viet., Cap. 68 An Act to amend the Matrimonial Causes
:
Acts (Matrimonial
Causes ^,1884). , , , r f .
for a suit of
High Court of Justice Queen s Bench Division: ex parte Emily Jackson
*
Habeas Corpus, March 16, 1891. Supreme Court of Judicature. Court of Appeal. The
same suit, March 17, 19, 1891. , , . ,
to the Guardianship and

49 & 50 Viet., Cap. 27: An Act to amend the Law relating
8
Custody of Infants (Guardianship and Custody of Infants Act, 1886).

to the Maintenance of
49 & 50 Viet., Cap. 52: An Act to amend the Law relating
4
Married Women who shall have been deserted by their Husbands (Married Women Main
tenance in case of Desertion Act, 1886). The Act was repealed in 1895 and
its very brief pro
visions were incorporated into a more complete Act: 58 & 59 Viet., Cap. 39:
An Act to
amend the Law relating to the Summary Jurisdiction of Magistrates in reference to Mar
ried Women. (Summary Jurisdiction [Married Women] Act, 1895).
5
7 Edw. 7, Cap. 47: An Act to amend the
Law relating to Marriage with a Deceased
Wife s Wife s Sister Marriage Act, 1907).
Sister (Deceased
Section 13. In 1911 Keir
6 Cap. 58: Workmen s Compensation Act, 1906,
Edw. 7,
Hardie attempted by an amendment to the National Insurance Bill to give the unmarried
mother an equal right with a married woman to receive Maternity as well as Sickness
after a lively debate
Benefit. But the Government did not accept his amendment which
was rejected by 207 to 95 votes. (H. of C.July 17, 1911 Parliamentary Debates, Commons
;
1911, 5th Series, vol. xxviii, p. 8o<5.)
497
DOMESTIC ANARCHY
But at the same time the insurgent women were turning their
efforts in another direction and conducting a campaign peculiar,
if not to England, at least to the Anglo-Saxon world. European
sex morality rests on the complementary pillars of marriage and
prostitution. The latter was

the field on which the defenders of
women s right won a brilliant victory.
The Napoleonic system in France made prostitution a profes

sion, dishonourable, no doubt, but sanctioned and regulated by
law. It expressed the attitude of a soldier who, since he condemned
a vast number of young men to compulsory celibacy and there
fore to irregular forms of sexual union, deemed it his duty both
to them and to the country to protect them against the danger of
venereal disease. The innovation was calculated to appeal to sol
diers of other nations. About 1860 the British high command
introduced in India for the use of the soldiers the system of regu
lated prostitution. Measures entitled Contagious Diseases Acts
were passed in 1864, 1866, 1868, and 1869 empowering the police
in certain urban centres to classify women on the denunciation
of their agents as common prostitutes, liable to imprisonment if
they refused to submit to a periodical medical examination, and
the system spread rapidly in the seaports and garrison towns.
Public opinion rose in revolt. It was not a question of abolish
ing a long-established institution which had become an abuse
because it was antiquated, but of protecting England against a
foreign importation, an infection* from the Continent and, what
was worse, Napoleonic and French. And had the system of legal
ized prostitution really reduced venereal disease? On
this point
statistics were uncertain and of
susceptible conflicting interpreta
tion. Too uncertain in any case, contended the
opponents of the
Contagious Diseases Acts, to justify condemning a woman on
the mere denunciation of a policeman to be for the rest of her life
a species of slave and pariah. And assuredly too uncertain to war
rant the introduction of this servitude into a
country whose proud
boast it was that for the past two centuries it had been the
prota
gonist of freedom. The movement was led by a woman of the
middle class, the wife of a man who occupied an important place
498
THE FEMINIST REVOLT
in the scholastic profession, the admirable Josephine Butler. 1 A
ministerial candidate, shortly before Governor of Malta, where
he had introduced the system of licensed houses, stood for Col
chester. Josephine Butler and an entire group of women fired by
her enthusiasm conducted a campaign against Hm. They braved
the ordeal of public discussions, open-air meetings, abuse and
violence from the mob, and they won the victory. A Royal
Commission was appointed to examine the question and after an
inquiry, in the course of which John Stuart Mill gave evidence,
reported in favour of abolishing licensed prostitution and raising
the age of consent from twelve to fourteen. 2 But it required
twelve years propaganda, religious preaching one is tempted to
call it rather than political agitation, before the Government, act
3
ing on a resolution of the House of Commons, suspended the
operation of the Contagious Diseases Acts, and it was not until
three years later that they were formally repealed. As regards the
Commission s other recommendation that the age of consent
should be raised, it was again Josephine Butler who led the way.
She passed her cause on to the great journalist, a blend of crusader
and charlatan, W. T. Stead. He was converted and a sensational
campaign in the Press, not devoid of scandal, led in a few months
to the passing of the Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1885,
which raised the age of consent not to fourteen but sixteen, made
procuration a crime, and an attempt to violate a girl under thir
teen punishable by flogging or penal servitude. 4 The adoption of
these measures, reinforced by further legislation passed from time
to time until the eve of the War, 5 was not simply a victory for the
women who were their passive beneficiaries. It was a victory for
1
For this campaign see Josephine Butler, An Autobiographical Memoir. Edited by G. M.
and L. A. Johnson, 1909, 3rdEdition, revised and enlarged 1928 also an excellent chapter in
;
Ray Strachey The Cause, 1928, pp. 187 sqq.

Report of Royal Commission upon the Administration and Operation of the Con
2
tagious Diseases Act, 1871, pp. 19-20.

3 H. of
C., April 20, 1883, Stansfield s motion. (Parliamentary Debates, 3rd Series, vol.
ccbocviii, pp. 749 sqq.).
4
48 & 49 Viet., Cap. 69: An Act to make further provision for the Protection of
Women and Girls, the suppression of Brothels and other Purposes (Criminal Law Amend
ment Art, 1885).
5 61& 62 Viet, Cap. 39 : An Act to amend the Vagrancy Act, 1824 (Vagrancy Act, 1898).
Its first section is directed against the bullies. The measure was extended to Scotland by
2 Edw. 7, Cap. n: An Act to make further provision for the Punishment of Persons
Trading in Prostitution in Scotland (Immoral Traffic (Scotland) Act, 1902) 2 & 3 Geo. 5,
Cap. 20: An Act to amend the Criminal Law Amendment Act, 1885, the Vagrancy Act,
1889 and the Immoral Traffic (Scotland) Act, 1902 (Criminal Law Amendment Act, 1912)
which on several points of detail tightens up the previous legislation.
499
DOMESTIC ANARCHY
women in much as they were the result of an
another sense in as
agitation conducted by women, and by
methods hitherto the
monopoly of the male sex. With this double agitation against the
legalization of prostitution and the white-slave traffic, the revolt
of women in England began.
We must not however imagine that these two campaigns repre

sent the entire history of the movement for the emancipation of
women during the concluding years of the nineteenth century.
They were accompanied by another agitation which was not the
lessimportant because it scarcely engaged the attention of Parlia
ment. Women claimed the right to perform on an equal footing
with men the same social functions. By degrees they secured their
object. But though success followed success, in 1914 they had not
yet won along the entire front. Nor is their victory complete even
1
now.
It had
always been admitted that women as well as men could
be teachers. The concession was, in fact, founded on the belief in
an unalterable difference between the sexes which made it inadvis
able for girls to be taught by men. Elementary schools for poor
girls, and private schools for the daughters of the middle class had
no difficulty in procuring a cheap supply of women teachers, and
it was an
easy matter for wealthier middle-class parents to obtain
governesses to give their daughters at home a very sketchy educa
tion which imparted more social accomplishments than intellec
tual training. And everyone agreed that for little children a mis
tress was better than a master.
Accordingly, professional statistics
show from the opening of the nineteenth century an enormous
majority of female over male teachers. The growth of education
produced a constant increase in the number of women teachers
2
70,000 in 1851, 172,000 in ipoi and according to a ratio a little
3
higher than the increase in the number of male teachers. Another
1
[1932. Translators note].
2
In England and Wales 69,340 in 1851; 80,057 in 1861; 94,229 in 1871; 123,995 in 1881;
114,393 in 1891 ; 171,670 in 1901.
8
In 1861 72.5 per cent of the teachers were women, in 1871 74.1 per cent, in 1881 72.7 per
cent, in 189174 per cent, in 1901 74.5 per cent (Census of England and Wales, 1.901. General
Report with Appendices, 1904, p. 86). Between 1901 and 1911 the increase seems tO have
5OO
THE FEMINIST REVOLT
effectwas a continuous improvement in the quality of their teach
ing. Governesses received a better training. A
new type of private
school for girls, far superior to the old, came into existence. In the
history of these schools the year 1865 was a decisive date for it
was then that after a campaign extending over years Cambridge
admitted girls to its local examinations, thereby putting the secon
dary education of regards the examinations by which it
girls as
was regulated on an equality with the secondary education of
boys. The era of the school boards followed and the schools under
of girls as well as boys tended to exceed
their authority in the case
the standard of primary education. To educate mistresses for a
teaching of better quality than before, training schools became
necessary and in turn teachers for the training schools. Could the
latter be refused the advantages of a university education? If not,
why should they not be thrown open at the same time to young
girls
of good family whose brothers were undergraduates of
Oxford or Cambridge? The conquest of the universities was one
of the great objectives pursued by women during the last third of
the nineteenth century.
It was not
easy. The agitators were faced by a double opposition,
from the universities two clubs of conservative old bachelors
and from parents alarmed at the prospect of mixing the sexes at
adolescence. The first step was to found by subscriptions raised
for the purpose, a college for women twenty-five miles from
Cambridge. Enthusiastic Fellows accepted the fatigue of the jour
ney to and fro to give lectures to the students. Then the college
was transferred to a distance of two miles. Finally the plunge was
taken and another women s college opened in the town itself. At
Oxford two were founded. But every precaution was taken
against scandal. The girl students could not go out unaccompanied
and attended the lectures in groups in charge of a chaperon. Nor
were they admitted from the outset to the same examinations as
the young men. The first concession, made by the University of
Cambridge, was to communicate the subjects of an examination
to friendly professors who held an unofficial examination of the
women students parallel to that which the men were taking at the
been greater among the men than the women. But the Census of England and Wales, 191.1
and Industries, Part I, p. xxf) explains this semblance. In order to obtain
(vol. x, Occupations
a better measure of the increase in the teaching profession, the numbers of ages twenty
years and upward at the two censuses may be compared, and these show
an increase of
30.4 per cent among males and of 33.6 per cent among females/
501
DOMESTIC ANARCHY
same time. But the movement which was equipping the great
cities with universities enabled the women to win at a single stroke
an important victory in this field. A Statute of 1875 had expressly
authorized these new universities to confer their degrees on
women. When in 1878 the University of London became a
teaching-university it immediately made

use of the right. It laid
down the principle of absolute equality between the sexes. All
degrees and positions in the teaching body were thrown open to
women students. The
Victoria University followed suit in 1880,
the University of Wales in 1893, Durham College in 1895. Oxford
and Cambridge could not refuse to make concessions. In 1881
and in 1884 Cambridge first, then Oxford admitted women stu
dents to the same examinations as men, though they refused to
1
confer degrees on the successful candidates.
surprising that the claim of women
It is to practise medicine
met with stronger opposition than their claim to teach. For it had
always been admitted that there was nothing incompatible with
a woman s nature in the professions of midwife and sick nurse.
Moreover, if it was more suitable that women should teach
women, why did not the same principle apply to medical treat
ment? Nevertheless, the opposition was formidable and deter
mined. It was, it would seem, a question of professional interest.
The doctors who were powerfully organized and regarded
medicine as a commercial profession were defending a lucrative
monopoly.
The great batde was fought simultaneously with the battle to
force an entrance into the universities. Often both fronts were
combined and the victory was, at least apparently, won on both
at the same time. It was about 1870 that three young girls attemp
ted to storm the medical faculty at Edinburgh University, braving
the coarse jests of their male comrades and what were nothing
short of riots among the students encouraged by the professors.
They succeeded in securing admission to the lectures and in pass
ing some examinations but in the end the Senate of the University
refused them the right to practice. The women adopted other
manoeuvres. They attempted to enter the medical profession
by way of the corporation of apothecaries by taking a mid
wife s
diploma or obtaining the degree of doctor of medicine
1
Ray Strachey, The Cause, pp. 141 sqq., 255 sqq. Barbara Stephen, Emily Dtwies and
Girton College, 1927.
502
THE FEMINIST REVOLT
on the Continent where in most countries it was open to women.
These attempts were always baffled. They founded in London a
medical school for women. The girls who had attended it were
not admitted to a single hospital in the metropolis. At last victory
seemed assured when in 1875 an Act was passed permitting uni
versities to confer degrees on women and another forbidding the
1
Royal College of Surgeons to exclude them. Even before the
University of London in 1878 had laid down the principle of
complete sex equality, the two Irish Colleges of Physicians had
admitted women and one of the London hospitals had accepted
students from the Women s Medical School The decennial cen
sus returns enable us to follow this invasion. In the census of 1881
lady doctors made their appearance for the first time twenty-
five in England and Wales. In 1891 there were a hundred, 212 in
1901, 477 in 1911. Nevertheless, in these years before 1914 they
were still faced with insurmountable difficulties. The new national
services indeed offered them an increasing number of openings,
the management of schools for mothers, infant welfare centres
and creches and inspectorships under the Ministry of Health. But
they were very rarely admitted to study in the hospitals and
women medical students were usually obliged to seek better
facilities at Vienna or in America. Nor would the hospitals accept
women doctors. Certain bodies, for instance the Ophthalmologi-

cal Society and the Society for the Study of Infantile Diseases,
refused to admit them to membership. We even hear of a medical
2
journal which refused to accept articles signed by women.
The
old universities of Oxford and Cambridge continued to
admit women to the examinations in medicine, theology,
refuse to
and law. As regards medicine this was of no consequence since
women could now obtain a doctorate at all the other universities
of the kingdom. As regards theology, it might be argued that by
excluding women Oxford and Cambridge shared the opinion
38 & 39 Viet., Cap. 43: An Act to amend the Medical Acts so far as relates to the
1
Royal College of Surgeons of England (Royal College of Surgeons Act, 1875) Section 2.
Ray Strachey The Cause, pp. 166 sqq., 251 sqq. Dr. Flora Murray, The Position of
2
Women in Medicine and Surgery (New Statesman, November 1, 1913, Special Supplement,
pp. xvi-xvii).
503
DOMESTIC ANARCHY
universal throughout Christendom that a woman could not be a
priest
or a minister. What was the use of giving her a degree when
she could not become a> teacher? But the Salvation Army had
made the innovation of giving women
an equal place with men
1 far as a religious body
among their officers and therefore, in so
without sacraments and therefore without ordination may be
regarded as a church, it was a church in which women violated
the principle laid Paul that women should not teach
down by St.
but keep silence The movement spread to the other religious

.
bodies. In 1874 the Wesleyan Conference allowed a woman

2
elected by one of the synods to take part in its deliberations. The
Anglican Church allowed a woman to becpme

a deaconess and
to on the parish councils. 3 Militant feminists cherished the
sit
hope that the day was near when, if not the Established
4
Church,
at least the sects would consent to ordain women. Finally, as
regards the law, the exclusion

maintained by Oxford and Cam
of the legal
bridge corresponded to the unyielding determination
profession. Could
the Inns of Court lawfully admit women?
Some maintained that could, but it would be a very long
they
time before they made use of the right, if it existed. Should the
word person in the Solicitors Act of 1843 be interpreted as

5
meaning man or woman? The courts replied in the negative.
But could England much longer lag behind the United States
where 20,000 women practised as lawyers, several of the Colonies,
1
By a decision taken in 1875 (Ray Strachey, The Cause, p. 214). Some innovators ap
pealed to another text of St. Paul, where he permits
women to prophesy, I Cor. xi, 5, 6,
also to Acts ii 17-18, xxi 9-10, to prove that the prohibition was not absolute. (The Dean
of Wells, Ought Women te Preach? I. The Ministry of Women
, Contemporary Review,
January-June 1884, vol. xlv, pp. 43 sqq.).

8
A committee appointed by the Conference to examine the question reported the
following year in favour of admitting women, and if the report was rejected by the
Con
ference it was by a very narrow majority.
8
In virtue of a decision taken in July 1914, by the Representative Council of the Angli
can Church. The voting proves that the Bishops were more favourable to the proposal
than the priests, the priests more favourable than the laity. 5
Murray, The Position of "Women and Surgery

* And even the Establishment: Flora
(New Statesman, November I, 1913, Special Supplement, p. xvii), It must be recognized

that a university education even for women leads directly to the door of the Bar, the
Cfottrcnand the Medical Piofession, and that the admission to these fields of learning and
enterprise and remuneration is only a question of time. So far as
the sects are concerned
the forecast has been realized. See the decision of the Wesleyan Conference of 1925. Cf.
Albert Peel, The Free Churches i903-1926, 1927, p. 444: Another way in which the out
look has been broadened is seen in the fuller and freer acceptance of the service of women,
who now not only do the work they have done so well before, but are trained as ministers,
elected as deacons and officers, and called to equal service with men.*
5
Bebb v. Law Society (Supreme Court ofJudicature. Chancery Division. July 2, 1913,
Court of Appeal, December 9, io r 1913).
504
THE FEMINIST REVOLT
and France? A Bill was about to be introduced into the Commons
to enable women to become solicitors and the Lord Chancellor
1
and the Prime Minister promised to support it. The final struggle
was at hand.
Though women could not become barristers or solicitors they

were not totally debarred from the purlieus of the law. They
entered lawyers offices as clerks, shorthand writers, and typists. 2
3
Simultaneously, they invaded the world of business. They were
indeed prevented by the rules of these bodies from becoming out
side or inside brokers, or sitting on the governing body of the
Stock Exchange or Bank. But here too, as throughout the hier
archy of commerce and industry, they could occupy positions
which, were nevertheless positions of trust and
if subordinate,
in which their punctuality and prompt obedience gave complete
satisfaction to their employers. For the first time women were
making their appearance as insurance agents and commercial

travellers. In the seventies when the great struggle for university
degrees was was not a woman in the City. Twenty

raging, there
later were still few and attracted attention. Now they
years they
were a multitude and you jostled past them without taking notice.
At the same time, they entered the public services. Here and
especially in the Post Office it
was nothing short of an invasion.
The number of persons employed by the central government or
local authorities was estimated by the census of 1911 at some
300,000, of whom 249,000 were men, 51,000 women. Compari
son with the figures of 1901 shows a total increase of 46 per cent
cent for men, 69.4 per cent
representing an increase of 42.3 per
4
for women. Nor was the new invasion of the same natufe as the
1
Lord Haldane reply to a deputation from The Committee for the Admission of
s Women
March
to the Solicitors Profession, 1914.
27,
51 women connected with law , the census of 1881,
2
The census of
1871 enumerates
100 law clerks and others connected with law*. In 1891 there were 166 clerks , in 1901
367. The progress becomes striking during the following decade.
The number of law
clerks of both sexes which had increased by a quarter during the previous decade in
creased only by a twentieth. But whereas the number of male clerks showed an insigni
from 34,066 to 34,106 the number of women rose from 367 to 2,159.
ficant increase,
3
The number of women employed as commercial and business clerks rose from 7,749
in 1881 to 23,050 in 1891, 74,620 in 1901 and 153,973 in 1911. In other words it had in
creased twentyfold while the entire number of employees of both sexes had merely
doubled: 212,067 in 1881, 420,538 in 1911.
* Census
of England and Wales, 1911, 1914, vol. x, p. xiii^ We must however bear in
mind that the vast majority of these women were employed in the Post Office. See Royal
Commission on Civil Service, 4th Report 1914, p. 22. "The Board of Education has, since
are now employed) by means
1898, recruited some female clerks (of whom about twenty
of the examination held to fill the Women Clerkships in the General Post Office, and a
505
DOMESTIC ANARCHY
invasion of the factoriesby women a century earlier. The women
had been driven into the factories by the necessity of earning a
livelihood and their presence was not in itself a triumph of
feminism. It rendered the champions of women s rights no other
service than to furnish them with an argument against their
oppo
nents. You want, you say, to keep women at home, why then
do you set them to the forced labour of your factories ? Now,
however, women entered offices of their free will and to find
freedom.
The young girl who leads a young man s life adopts his man
ners. She no longer curtsies on entering a drawing-room nor
awaits her elders invitation to be seated. She talks with her back
against the mantelpiece puffing at her cigarette. All these gestures
are signals of independence.
They proclaim that she is in no hurry
to get married and that when she does
marry she is determined to
maintain her independence in face of her husband and, if need be,
in opposition to Ham. What Blackstone termed with such unction
the mysterious reverence of the
nuptial tie is a thing of the past.
,
An entire literature has come into being which urges women to

revolt. Grant Allen was the
first to invite
English girls to imitate
The Woman who Did, the woman who refuses to consecrate
by legal wedlock her union with the man she loves. In her ponder
ous and grotesque novel The
Heavenly Twins Sarah Grand
branded masculine immorality and advised her women readers to
refuse consummate legal marriage with a dissolute husband and
tt>
thus shake off the

yoke of the male when he was unworthy.
Among the rebels the
outstanding figures were Ibsen, Shaw, and
H. G. Wells, who had their disciples and fanatics. One young
few more of this have been taken into the office of the Registrar General, in addition
class
to the considerable force of women which has on several occasions been
employed tem
porarily in that department on work connected with the decennial census. The office staff
of the Public Trustee is a mixed male and female one, and female clerks have been intro
duced into the centres of the Labour
Exchange offices, but these situations are at present
on a temporary basis. With these exceptions and
excluding female typists who are em
ployed in many departments in increasing numbers, but form a class by themselves, it
remains true at the present time that women have not
procured admission to the clerical
service of the State. They are, however, in
growing, though still small, numbers, employed
with advantage to the
community as inspectors under various departments, where they
discharge useful functions in connection with women and children. Their
under the Local Education Authorities as teachers in the Public employment
Elementary and Secondary
Schools lies outside the
scope of our inquiry.
506
THE FEMINIST REVOLT
woman would say 1 will be Norah and for no serious reason leave
a husband who in her opinion was
C
attempting to treat her as a
doll: Another I will be Vivian Warren, quit the home of an
unworthy mother and refuse a fortune amassed by immoral
methods. But for a logical Socialist what capital has been acquired
in a manner less infamous than Mrs. Warren s money? I will be
Ann Veronica 1 will be Isabel Rivers. In 1909 H. G. Wells
:
published his Ann Veronica, in 1911 his New Macchiavelli, in 1913

his Passionate Friends, three novels, two of which are autobiogra
phical. He advocates a system in which the woman alone will be
responsible to society for her children, and receive a bounty from
the State for every child she bears and brings up. The men with
whom she entertains free relations will be conscious of no bond
with her children beyond sentiments of free affection. It is with a
smile that we hear Hugh Price Hughes at the opening of the
century congratulate himself on the fact that the Protestantism,
the Puritanism of the sects had imparted to British feminism a
moral austerity which had preserved it from the immorality that
tainted the movement in some foreign countries. 1 Nevertheless,
on further reflection we become aware of a survival of Puritanism
certainly one of which Price Hughes never thought at work
in these defiances of traditional morality. These bold young girls
flung themselves into free love not so much at the urge of sexual
passion as to perform a duty, to prove to the world and to them
selves that they had learned the lessons of Shaw and Wells. They
wrestled with the reluctance of blushing young men until they
bent them to their cold determination. I ve had a biological train
ing, declared Ann Veronica. I m a hard young woman. 2
It is not without hesitation that I
approach such a difficult sub
ject. Howdeep did this movement for the emancipation of

women go, and what in fact did it signify?
There was an industrial proletariat where the morals of the
young people were very free and custom simply required a young
man to marry the girl whom he had made pregnant. And there
was a rural proletariat where it even allowed young men to enter
-into trial unions. They did not marry until they were certain the
1
Life of Hugh Price Hughes by his daughter, pp. 254~5-
* An
Ann Veronica, chap. xiv. Cf. John Stuart Mill, On the Subjection of Women, p. 123 :
Oriental thinks that women are by nature peculiarly voluptuous: see the violent abuse of
them, on this ground in Hindoo writings. An Englishman usually thinks that they are by
nature cold/
507
DOMESTIC ANARCHY
girl was not barren. the stern law of poverty and

Once married
labour sufficed to compel husband and wife to fidelity. And there
was an aristocracy, an aristocracy of birth and an aristocracy of
wealth where leisure engenders laxity and laxity inconstancy,
in which men and women become accustomed to live above the
level of ordinary morals and enjoy themselves on the produce of
other people s morality. It was only in the middle class whose
boundaries above and below were not easy to draw but whose
character was very definite in which those habits prevailed of
self-imposed discipline and voluntary obedience to the law of

work and the law of marital fidelity^which are the essence of
morality. But the feature of the feminist revolt of the early twen
tieth century which seemed so disquieting was that it arose in
this very middle class which, it
appeared, was beginning to doubt
itself. In
England more than in any other ^country the middle class
had succeeded in imposing its culture ujton society and exacting
from the classes above and below it at least an outward respect for
its moral
prejudices. Now England was ceasing to be middle class.
If, however, we view the situation from another angle and con
sider the relations between the sexes without respect to class we
may perhaps be disposed to adopt a different interpretation of the
change which was in process while fully admitting its far-reaching

character. To maintain that the woman differs from the man is
not to maintain that she is his inferior. It means that she is different
and that her distinctive qualities though of equal or, if you will,
higher social value than his give her activities a different direction.
It is a
striking and a significant fact that in all the commercial or
administrative careers now being opened to women the latter
were content to occupy subordinate positions. In the government
departments all the higher positions carrying with them authority
remained closed to women. And their salaries remained lower
than men s. 1 In countless instances a rule was in force that a woman
must leave her post on marriage and. return to the home. 2 Was
1
See on this point the unsuccessful efforts made in 1872 by Miss Davies and Mrs.
Garrett Aaderson. (Ray Strachey, The Cause, p. 227) and the criticisms of the anti-
feminist, Sir Almroth Wright, in a letter to The Times (March 1912). See also on the eve
of the War the debates at the annual conference of the National Union of Teachers, April
14, 1914.A motion brought forward By women demanding equal salaries was rejected by
a majority of 58,483 to 11,017 votes.
*
See for instances the debates at meetings of the London County Council on April 8,
and July 28, 1914. Margaret Wynne Nevinson can still write in 1923 We have had many
:
examples lately of how municipal authorities hamper and restrict married women in their
work; a woman doctor was lately dismissed in a London borough for the crime of mar-
508
THE FEMINIST REVOLT
this simply a survival from the period when man ruled over
woman and, the period of transition once
passed, would a. system
soon exist which made no differentiation between the sexes? We
cannot forget the admission implied in the complaint made by an
uncompromising feminist in 1913 that, in the world of business,
women are not sufficiently ambitions and that they seem too
,
often content with the poorly-paid routine

posts and too little
inclined to venture anything on their own account 1 The
question .
forces itself upon us whether the two sexes are not so

distinguished
by the law of their natures that the man is prone to command, the
woman to self devotion, so that when a man claims rights it is to
increase his power, when a woman claims them it is on the con
trary to have further opportunity of service. cannot fail toWe

be struck by the large number of women who at the very moment
when they came boldly into the open to urge their claims pro
fessed conservative political opinions. The others
very seldom
professed themselves Liberals but went straight to the Socialist
camp. Was this the sign of a passionate nature which loves ex
tremes? It would seem on the contrary that they were attracted
by Socialism not as a more revolutionary form of Liberalism, a
movement for complete emancipation, but because they saw it
as in respects a reaction against the Liberalism which had
many
originally demanded the emancipation of women. Its appeal was
its
policy of a grandmotherly legislation which did not shrink
from interference with every detail of private life to ensure the
welfare of the weak and which treated society as a magnified
home. 2 We are therefore compelled to ask how far the women s
riage; and Education Committees have always discouraged and in some places forbidden
women to continue teaching after marriage though many experts maintain that women
who are mothers have more sympathy and skill in the management of small children than
the single* (The Legal Wrongs of Married Women, p. 6). And in 1926 the custom was for
mally sanctioned by a regulation of the London County Council (Standing Order 395) .
For the problem of married women s labour as it presents itself in private business see
Clementine Black s interesting study, Married Women s Work. Being the Report of an Inquiry
undertaken by the Women s Industrial Council, 1915.
1
Mrs. W.L. Courtney, New Types of Subordinate Women Brain-Workers (New
Statesman, November 1, 1913, Special Supplement, p. xix).
2
This was one of the reasons for which Herbert Spencer, the thorough-going opponent
of Socialism, was equally hostile to woman suffrage. It would aid and stimulate all parts
of State administration, the great mass of which are necessarily antagonistic to personal
freedom. Men in their political actions are far too much swayed by proximate evils and
benefits; women would be thus swayed far more. Given some kind of social suffering
and
to be cured or some boon to be got, and only the quite exceptional woman would be able
to appreciate detrimental reactions that would be entailed by legislative action. Political
foresight of this kind, uncommon enough in men, is extremely rare in women* (Letter
to
DOMESTIC ANARCHY
must be interpreted as an attempt to achieve equality with
revolt
men or on the contrary as an attempt to reform society according
to the ideal of their sex, to make themselves masculine or society
feminine. This doubt must be borne in mind when we study, as
we now must, the last of the feminist claims the right to vote
and be elected to Parliament, and to be admitted to executive
office the claim which truly be said to have absorbed the
may
entire energies of the feminists of both sexes during the years
immediately the War. Whatever the purpose, liber

preceding
tarian or conservative, which in the last resort inspired these
John Stuart Mill, August 9, i8(5y). Mrs. Rainsay MacDonald, one .of the pioneers of
British neo-Socialism, considered the essential function of Socialism to be the protection
of the home. J, Ramsay MacDonald writes (Margaret Ethel MacDonald, p. 233) She once :
defined Socialism as "The State of Homes*" and he himself stated in 1908: Socialism is
essential to family life ... the idea of divorce is foreign to the Socialist state (Haslemere,
May n, 1908; Labour Leader, May 15, 1908). Cf. the interesting biological and sociological
observations presented by Walter Heape in a book entitled Sex Antagonism, 1913. Accord
ing to him the male sex is essentially individualistic, whereas die female sex represents the
subordination of the individual to the species. The feminists protested against these state
ments. But often they unintentionally confirmed them. See Beatrice "Webb, My Appren
is an
ticeship, p. 276: It is no use shifting one s eyes from the facts that there increasing
number of women to whom a matrimonial career is shut and who seek a masculine re
ward for masculine qualities. ... I think these strong women have a great future before
them in the solution of social questions. They are not just inferior men; they may have
masculine faculty, but they have the woman*s temperament and the stronger they are the
more distinctly feminine they are in this. You may perhaps reply that Mrs. Webb has
never been more than a very moderate feminist and was not a feminist at all when she
wrote these lines in November 1885. Consider then the admission implied in an article
by Lady Betty Balfour, indeed in its very tide, Motherhood and the State* (New States
man, November 1, 1913, p. xii) In the working of the modern state there is more of [this]
spirit of motherhood than has probably ever been exhibited before throughout the historic
ages. ... It is significant of the new spirit of social service that the undergraduates at the
Universities now discuss practical, social, and economic problems where formerly they
would have discussed theology or literature. Symptoms of this spirit are yearly more
apparent in our national legislation and in the subjects discussed at international gatherings
. . .
symptoms of the same thing, the awakening of a spirit of motherhood in the State.
Cf. the anonymous article entitled "Women in Industry. Character and Organization,* The
<
Times* April 29, 1913 : . . . The women who are the outstanding figures in the Labour
movement prefer Socialism and probably the ablest of the younger generation whom they
have trained have strong Socialistic leanings; but their socialism is assuredly not of a
revolutionary type. It might almost be said to be domestic.* Lucien Romier (Promotion de la
Femmc, 1930, p, 60) explains the success of the feminist movement in English-speaking
countries by the fact that there women differ less from men than elsewhere, though the
men are more feminine, not the women more masculine. *By nature women dislike the
abstract, speculative analysis, the thrust and parry of logical argument, the criticism which
questions everything before it attempts to construct, all of which are native characteristics
of me Mediterranean race and opposed to the Nordic mentality. You will bore the aver
age Englishman and a woman of any country if you speak of the idea] constitution of a
State, but the same topic will arouse the passionate interest of a docker at the Piraeus, a
grocer of Toulouse, and a professor of Salamanca. Without denying the historical effects
of chance, we shall perceive that the supremacy at present enjoyed by the Anglo-Saxon
and Nordic peoples over the Mediterranean and Oriental races represents in the last resort
the triumph of this feminine type of mentality which apprehends and
pursues a practical
aim without worrying about barren logic.
510
THE FEMINIST REVOLT
women, the methods they employed to attain their object and
thek cause the advertisement of scandal were undoubtedly
give
1
anarchic.
Bentham had claimed equality of political rights for both sexes

but his disciple James Mill had parted company with him on this
point and the Chartists after preliminary hesitations finally
decided
against his programme.
They were content with asking for the
universal suffrage of men, manhood suffrage. When however
John Stuart Mill in his Representative Government and Subjection

of Women returned to Bentham s doctrine the time seemed
at last
to have arrived forit to bear fruit. More even than these two
books the important speech Mill delivered in the House of Com

mons pleading that woman suffrage should be introduced into
the Reform Bill passed that year forced the matter upon the
attention of the Press and public. 2 The amendment was of course
rejected but Mill and his friends convinced themselves that the
reform would be effected before many years had passed and
would precede and facilitate all the other reforms the grant to
married women of the right to own property, the abolition of
State-regulated prostitution to which the efforts of the
feminists
were directed at the time. 3 As we know, the exact contrary hap-
1 For the
strictly political emancipation of women see History of Women. Suffrage
in 6
volumes (voLi, 1848-1861, 1881; vol.ii, 1861-1876, 1887; vol. in, 1876-1885, 1887; vol. iv,
1885-1900, 1902; vols. v and vi, 1900-1920, 1932). The first three volumes were written
by Elizabeth Lady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony and Mathilda Joslyn Gap, the fourth by
Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper, the fifth and sixth by Ida Husted Harper. It is a
monumental American compilation chiefly concerned with the United States, containing
E. Metcalfe, Women s
chapters which deal with England and the British Colonies. A.
Effort. A
Chronicle of British Women s Fifty Year? Struggle for Citizenship (1865-1914} with
an Introduction by Laurence Housman, 1917. Margaret Wynne Nevinson, Five Years*
Struggle for Freedom. A History of the Suffrage Movement from 1908
to 1912, 1913. See
further the work already mentioned by Ray Strachey, The Cause, passim and for the
suffragette* movement the works quoted later in a note
to p. 307.
*
EL of C, May 20, 1867 (Parliamentary Debates, 3rd Series, vol. clxxxvii, pp. 817 sqq.).
For Mill s intervention see the remarks of the Annual Register for the year, p. 72 ; "The next
Amendment was of rather a singular character; it was moved by Mr, J. S. Mill, the object
being to enable women to vote. The discussion assumed a somewhat jocular character;
but the proposition was advocated with serious earnestness by Mr. Mill.*
John Stuart Mill to Florence Nightingale, December 31, 1867: . : What, however,
.
constitutes an even more pressing and practical reason for endeavouring to obtain the
to sweep away any or all
political enfranchisement of women, instead of endeavouring
of their social grievances, is, that I believe it will be positively easier to attain this reform
than to attain any single one of all the others, all of which must inevitably follow from it.
To prefer to sweep away any of these others first, is as though we were to prefer to cut
DOMESTIC ANARCHY
penecL Whereas these reforms were extorted by the action out

side Parliament of women who had no vote, the question of their
continued to hang fire.
political rights
Between Mill s death and the year 1906 the House of Commons
had voted on four occasions in favour of woman suffrage. But in
every instance it had been simply a declaration of principle and
the majority, always a mixed majority of Liberals and Conserva
tives, were perfectly well aware that no Cabinet, Liberal or Con
servative, would make woman suffrage a government measure.
At first sight it us to find such a persistent opposition to
surprises
the women s claim, to which the latter would reply by a fanaticism
equal to their opponents obstinacy. To allow women to become

professors and doctors, to invade the offices of lawyers and men
of business was nothing less than to revolutionize their life and in
consequence the state of society as a whole. But would the social
order be greatly perturbed if every six years old maids, young
even married women, silently dropped their vote in the
allot box? Did not husbands allow their wives to take an active
firls,
part in their electoral campaigns ? Had not women been permitted

ever since 1834 to vote for the Boards of Guardians who adminis
tered the Poor Law? Had they not possessed since 1869 the muni
cipal vote and since 1870 the power to elect and be elected to the
School Boards? In 1888 they had obtained the right to vote for
the new County Councils. And had not the Local Government
Act of 1894 when it set
up district and parish councils granted
women the right not only to vote for these bodies but to sit on
them and in addition to sit on the Boards of Guardians?1 Never-
away branch after branch: giving more labour to each branch than we need do to the
trunk of the tree/ (The Letters ofJohn Stuart Mill, vol. ii, pp. 102-3.) To Sir Charles Dilke,
May 28, 1870: I am in great spirits about our prospects and think we are almost within
as many years of victory as I formerly thought of decades
(ibid., vol. ii, p. 254).
1 The
following is an attempt to summarize the extremely confused and illogical
English legislation in respect of women s civic rights as it existed at the end of the nine
teenth century. The Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834 (4 & 5 Will. IV,
Cap. 76 S. 34) gave
the right to vote for the boards of guardians which it set
up to the ratepayers. But among
these ratepayers were women and they made use of the
right attached to their payment of
rates.On the other hand, the Act of 1835 on municipal
corporations (5 &6 Will. IV,
Cap. 76 sec. 9) reserved the right to vote to every male person of full age* who fulfilled
certain conditions. It was only in 1869 (32 & 33 Viet., Cap. 55: An Act to shorten the
Time of Residence required as a Qualification for the Municipal Franchise and to make
provision for other purposes, sec. 9) that the feminists of the period secured an amend
ment providing that all the words in the Act implying the male sex* should be regarded
as applicable to women in so far as concerns the
right to vote*. The following year when
the Education Act of 1870 (33 & 34 Viet., Cap. 75 sec. 29) set up to administer the new law
school boards very similar in constitution to the boards of
guardians set up by the Poor
512
THE FEMINIST REVOLT
theless there must have been a deep-seated reason for this stubborn
opposition which was by no means confined to England. And in
all it was this.
probability
There is one right which women have never claimed in the
1
West, to serve in the army as privates or officers. 2 But from time
immemorial the performance of political functions has been asso
ciated with the performance of military. It is on those who defend
the country that the office of governing it devolves. It was no
doubt this military conception of government which consciously
or unconsciously inspired the opposition of public opinion to the
political
claims of feminism when it became increasingly tolerant
of the rest. Certainly women might have a share in dealing with
Law of 1834 the Statute was deliberately drafted, as the Government declared (H. of C.,
June 16, 1870; Parliamentary Debates, 3rd Series, vol. ccii, p. 259) in such terms as to enable
women to vote for the new boards and be elected to them. Could it be concluded from
this thatthe Act of 1869 which gave women the right to vote for municipal councillors
also permitted their election? In fact, no women made the experiment and when an
important consolidating Act was passed in 1882 dealing with the municipal councils (45
& 46 Viet., Cap. 50) a clause in the Statute declared in the very terms of the Act of 1869,
that a woman was put on an equal footing with a man so far as the right to vote is con
cerned and for the rest kept silence. When, therefore, the Local Government Act (51 & 52
Viet., Cap. 41) which set up the County Councils was passed in iSSS and two women
were elected to the London County Council the courts pronounced the election illegal on
the ground that the Act as regards the conditions of election referred to the Act of 1882
which in turn coming after the Act of 1869 must be regarded as excluding women from
the right to be elected. (Beresford-Hope v. Lady Sandhurst, Supreme Court ofJudicature,
Queen s Bench Division, March 18, April 14, 1889; Court of Appeal, May 8, 15, 16,
1889.) It was in fact expressly laid down the same year by the Local Government (Scotland)
Act, 1889 (52 Sc 53 Viet., Cap. 50 sec. 9) that no woman could be elected a county coun
cillor. We may add that in 1894 the feminists won an important victory when the Local
Government Act of that year (56 &
57 Viet., Cap. 73) gave both sexes an equal right to
vote for the parish councils and boards of guardians, and be elected to them and provided
that marriage should not deprive a woman of the civic rights she had hitherto enjoyed.
But very little progress in this direction was made during the years which followed. If the
Poor Law Guardians (Ireland) (Women) Act of 1896 (58 &
59 Viet., Cap. 5) gave the
women the same right to be elected to the Boards of Guardians as they already possessed
in England and the Local Government (Ireland) Act of 1898 (61 &
62 Viet., Cap. 37) which
set up County Councils in Ireland gave women as in England the right to vote but not
to be elected, women were not entitled to sit on the Borough Councils set up in London
by fae London Government Act of 1899 (62 #63 Viet., Cap. 14) though they had always
the Act abolished and the Education Act of
possessed the right to sit on the vestries which
a large number of
1902 (2 Edw. 7, Cap. 42) by abolishing the school boards on which
women had seats and transferring their functions to the County Councils for which
women were ineligible constituted in this respect a serious setback to the cause of feminism.
1
Mrs. Pember Reeves certainly writes as follows (New Statesman, November I, 1913,
Special Supplement, p. xxiv)
To say with seriousness that women should be eligible for
:
positions in the army . provokes both

. . horror and ridicule. But that does not prevent the
statement being true. But see how she justifies her assertion. She continues: Hundreds of
women . would make able officials in the commissariat and other departments of the
. .
of the British
army and the navy. Florence Nightingale revolutionized certain aspects
for women is access to the non-
army. Evidently what Mrs. Pember Reeves is claiming
military departments of the army.
2
Written 1932, Editor s note.
513
DOMESTIC ANARCHY
and the provision and main
questions of poor relief, education,
tenance of roads. These were domestic questions. And when the
women who an anti-suffragist
opposed female suffrage founded
league of which Mrs. Humphry
Ward was President they were
careful to state expressly that all these problems are within the
hand these municipal
competence of women. But on the other
elections had little interest for the public. Only a small minority
of the voters took the trouble to record their votes. But it was the
great consultations
of the people which were milestones in the
history of the nation. If more insistently every year
women were
pressing their
claim to share in these it was not simply to defend
the distinctive interests of their sex. They had won many victories
by other means and the trade unionists were discovering that
to secure the immediate satisfaction of their demands the strike
was a more powerful weapon than the ballot box. What women
claimed was the right to perform the highest duty of citizenship
in the interest of the entire community.
After the period of successful agitation which had marked the

years when Gladstone and Disraeli guided the destinies
of the
nation, the close of the nineteenth century had marked a halt in
the progress of feminism as in that of other democratic ideas. But
when a Liberal revival followed the Boer War the question of
the political emancipation of women, as we should expect, came
again to the forefront. In 1904 a motion in the House of Commons
in favour of women s
suffrage was passed by a majority of 114,
the largest had yet obtained. 1 Its champions could point out
it
that on this point England now lagged behind the rest of the
English-speaking
C> O world. New Zealand had possessed women
JL JL
suf&age since 1893, South Australia since 1894, Western Australia

since 1899, New South Wales since 1902, the Australian Com
monwealth from its foundation that very year. Tasmania adopted
it in 1903 and Queensland would
adopt it in 1905. In the United
States of America four Western States had admitted women to
the suffrage, Wyoming in 1869, Colorado in 1893, Utah in 1895,
1 C
KL of M March 16, 1904. Sir Charles Maclaren s motion (Parliamentary Debates, 4th
Series, vol. cxxxi, pp. 1331 sqq.).
514
THE FEMINIST REVOLT
Idaho in 1896, and extension to the entire country seemed in
its
evitable.
1
And in Europe
itself, almost at England s door, in 1901
two years after the extension of the suffrage to all male citizens,
Norway had granted the franchise to about half the women above
2
twenty-five years of age. The moment was near when the Liberal
party would be once more in office. It was professedly the party
of reform. Every champion of reform believed himself to have a
claim upon it. Feminist propaganda redoubled and concentrated
its effortson securing political rights for women.
There was an old society of women suffragists founded under
the auspices of Mill in 1867. In that year the London National
Society for Women
s
Suffrage was formed which, working in
close co-operation with a number of similar societies in the pro
vinces, employed all the methods of legal propaganda current in
England and brought peaceful pressure to bear on Members of
Parliament. In 1888 it had been embarrassed by an attempt of its
Liberal members to introduce their party organizations into the
society and gradually to annex it to the Liberal party. The attempt
gave rise to quarrels and a split which weakened the Society. But
about the beginning of the new century the two rival groups
became reconciled and united to form the National Union of
Women s Suffrage Societies. How long would it be before the
Union s patient methods were victorious? Meanwhile its mem
bers abandoned themselves to the pleasure which English people
enjoy so keenly of founding groups, gathering recruits they

began to come in in large numbers drawing up rules, electing
presidents, secretaries,
and treasurers, and organizing public meet
3
ings in the customary style.
But side by side with the National
Union a new society came into existence of a very different
see Frank
progress of women suffrage in the United States about this period
1 For the
Foxcroft Women Suffrage in the United States of America* (Nineteenth Century , Novem
ber 1909, vol. Ivi, pp. 833 sqq.) who however points out that since 1898 the movement
seemed to have come to a sudden halt owing to the obvious indifference of the women.
2
Marie Blehr Schlytter, "The Women s Movement in Norway* (New Statesman, Feb
ruary 7, 1914, PP- 554-6).
3
Ray Strachey, The Cause, p. 309: Within a year or two they had evolved a technique
of democracy inside their own ranks which became in itself an absorbing interest* Cf. ibid.,
p. 105.The writer is speaking of the formation of the first suffragist committee in 1867:
Tor a fortnight the little committee worked, delighted with the distinguished and respect
able signatures which came in and enjoying themselves to the full ; and a little later (pp.
118-119), speaking of the first public meetings held by the women: Delightful
as the actual
occasion was . . . the new style of meeting did not escape unfriendly comment. ... It was
too. . .On
undoubtedly very hard work for those first speakers and very agitating work
the otherhand it must have been much more entertaining than public meetings have since
become, morefull of novelty and excitement and of the sense of real adventure*
515
DOMESTIC ANARCHY
character, founded in ,1903, the Women s Social and Political
Union. Its founders, Mrs. Pankhurst and her daughter Christabel,
women of a middle-class family which for years had devoted it
self body and soul to Socialist propaganda, would appear to have
desired at first to give the new feminist organization a distinctively
Socialist character. They would have liked to make it the feminine
section of the Labour Representation Committee which was being
formed at the time. Then the political beliefs of its foundresses
changed. By degrees they transferred their allegiance from
Socialism to the Conservative party. It was its violent methods
which distinguished the Women s Social and Political Union
from the National Union. And as the years passed these methods
dictated an original form of constitution. The Union possessed
no written constitution, no rule which might hamper its leaders
decisions. Anyone willing to subscribe, subscribed as much as he
wished and the zealots who led the organization made whatever
use of the funds they pleased. 1 The suffragettes as the militants
of the new movement2 soon came to be called to distinguish them
from the suffragists* of the old National Union had no control
over the central organization whose orders they blindly obeyed.
In 1897 i*1 the course of the debates in the House of Commons
on a feminist Bill introduced that year, a member speaking in
support of the Bill had pointed out the obstacles with which
women were faced when they attempted to urge their claims. It
contrary he said, to the nature of women to take part in those
is ,
formidable demonstrations which from time to time mark the

3
activity of political enthusiasm among men. Mrs. Pankhurst was
to prove his psychology false by showing that women could
organize demonstrations which, if they were of a different charac-
1
For thisnew agitation see E. Sylvia Pankhurst, The Suffragette. The History of the
Women s Militant Suffrage Movement, 1905-1910, 1911 and especially her excellent work,
far more thorough in its treatment than the former, The Suffragette Movement. An Intimate
Account of Persons and Ideals, 1931. Also Annie Kenney s
entertaining Memoirs of a Militant,
1924-
2
The word makes its appearance between inverted commas in the Daily Mail at the
beginning of 1906 (January 10, February 12) and it is to this paper that Sylvia Pankhurst
ascribes its invention. (The Suffragette, p. 62 n.) Two years later it is in current use. See
A. L. Lowell, The Government ofEngland, vol. i, p. 216; (The preface is dated April 1908) :
Many women are agitating for it very vigorously, and the most enthusiastic of them have
sought martyrdom by refusing to pay taxes, by creating a disturbance in the ladies gallery
of the House of Commons, and by getting arrested for
speech-making in Palace- Yard.
They are known as Suffragettes.*
3
H. of C., February 3, 1897, Atherley-Jones speech (Parliamentary Debates, 4th Series,
vol. xlv, p. 1182).
516
THE FEMINIST REVOLT
ter from the riots in which the male sex had indulged in the past,
were no less formidable. On October 13, 1905, Sir Edward Grey
took the chair at a great Liberal meeting held in the Free Trade
Hall, Manchester. Everyone knew that a general election was
imminent and that the Liberal party must decide upon its pro
gramme. A number of women, members of the Social and
Political Union, waving small flags which bore the words Votes
for Women and interrupting at every turn the speech of the
principal speaker, succeeded

in seriously holding up the meeting
until at last they were roughly ejected, taken in charge by the
police,
and finally sentenced to a fine and imprisonment if it were
not paid. They chose imprisonment. They were Christabel Pank-
hurst, Mrs. Pankhurst s daughter, and Annie Kenney, a young
Lancashire mill girl whom the Pankhursts had discovered, con
verted, and adopted. At last the cause possessed its martyrs.
The militants continued their campaign throughout the entire
Election. After its
victory what would the Liberal Cabinet do?
We must examine the difficulties which confronted them, if they
wished to give the feminists any satisfaction.
10
The Government might adopt the plan put forward by Mill in

1867, and propose to give women the vote on the same terms as
men possessed it under the existing franchise. This course presen

ted the advantage that the reform would be extremely moderate.
Only a small number of women would receive the vote, spin
sters, widows, and married women who carried on some species
of trade. 500,000 women it was estimated would be enfran
chised,
1 male electorate of over 7,000,000. And it
as against a
would be extremely undemocratic. Almost all the new women
voters would belong to the wealthier classes, and only a handful
of working women would obtain the vote. Mill was prepared to
accept this result. If only one
woman in 20,000 used the suffrage,
to be declared capable of it would be a boon to all women. Even
that theoretical enfranchisement would remove a weight from
the expansion of their faculties, the real mischief of which is much
1 H. of C., February 3, 1897. Faithfull Begg s speech. (Parliamentary Debates, 4th Series,
vol. xlv, p. 117).
517
DOMESTIC ANARCHY
1
But it was not acceptable to all the
greater than the apparent.
Liberal politicians. In the case of the boards of guardians, the
school boards, and the district, and borough councils a
county,
might be tolerable. We have
reform on these lines seen how little
interest the country took in these elections. But it would be dan
to extend it to elections
parliamentary
and when an impor
gerous
tant national decision was at stake to grant the vote to a minority
of women suspected of Conservative sympathies. And the danger
would be the greater because a considerable section of the Unionist
the guidance of its most eminent leaders had
opposition under
declared in favour of women suffrage. The Liberal members of
the House of Commons were indeed the readier to vote in favour
of the principle because they knew that their leaders were divided
on the question and its settlement remote.
Or another method might be chosen and women suffrage in
a a general reform of the franchise.
corporated into Bill effecting
After the reform of 1884 only one more step remained to be
taken and England would possess an unqualified system of univer
sal suffrage. Why not enact that every adult Englishman should
the vote but only a single vote and every Englishwoman
possess
as well ? But how long must the women wait before such a reform
could be effected? If the House of Commons and even the House
of Lords was prepared at a stretch to take this final step on the
road to universal suffrage by granting the vote to the minority of
adult males which was still unenfranchised, it would be a long
time before a majority could be found to risk a reform which by
establishinguniversal suffrage for both sexes would more than
double the electorate at a single stroke. To link the two questions
of universal and women suffrage was, the feminists suspected,
nothing more than a device for shelving the second question.
In
1907 a motion in favour of women suffrage was, the Speaker

reluctantly decided, blocked by a previous motion in favour
of
adult suffrage for both sexes alike. Had not the latter motion
2
been deliberately introduced to prevent the discussion of the for

mer? When a month earlier the annual congress of the Labour
party wished to setde the question of women suffrage by passing
a motion in favour of equal adult suffrage the chairman, Keir
Hardie, a fanatical feminist, had threatened to resign from the
1 H. of C., May 20, 1869 (Parliamentary Debates, 3rd Series, vol. cbcxxvii, p. 824),
2
H. of C., March 25, 1907 (ibid., 4th Ser., vol. clxxi, pp. 1525-1526).
518
THE FEMINIST REVOLT
party rather than associate himself with tactics which in his

opinion were intended to postpone the issue.
ii
After the Liberal victory at the polls the members of the differ
ent groups of women working for the suffrage, the National
Union and the Social and Political Union, in spite of the serious
difficulties in the way of common action demanded and obtained
a joint interview with the new Premier. May 19 Sir Henry On
Campbell-JBannerman received the deputation at Downing Street
and stated that he was personally in agreement with their claim,
which he regarded as based upon "conclusive and irrefutable
arguments. But he reminded them that on this subject his party
and the Cabinet itself were divided and that they would have
many to overcome. He concluded by giving them two
difficulties
pieces of advice: to go on pestering and exercise the virtue of

,
7
patience The suffragists followed the second and their patience

.
was in fact put to a severe test. During the first two sessions of the
Liberal Government they were obliged to be satisfied with two
Acts passed simultaneously which permitted women to sit on
County Councils and Borough Councils in England and on
County Councils and Town Councils in Scotland. And it was
1
provided that if a woman were elected chairman of County

a
Council or mayor of a borough she could not exercise the func
tions of a justice of the peace which, had she been a man, would
have been attached automatically to the office. The suffragettes
followed Sir Henry s first piece of advice and continued to pester
1
7 Edw. 7, An Act to amend the Law relating to the capacity of women to be
Cap. 33 :
elected and Members of County or Borough Councils (Qualification of Women
act as
[County and Borough Councils] Act, 1907)- 7 Edw. 7, Cap. 48: An Act
to amend the law
relating to the capacity of women to be elected and act as Members

of County or Town
Councils in Scotland (Qualification of Women County and Town Councils [Scotland] Act,
1907). The same rights were extended to women in Ireland by I & 2 Geo. V, Cap. 35
:
An Act to enable women to be elected and act as Members of County and Borough
Councils in Ireland (Local Authorities [Ireland] Qualification of Women Act, 1911). For the
real unimportance of this reform see H. of L., May 5, 1914, speech by the Bishop of
London: *. . It is true that women have since 1907 been made eligible for County
.
Councils, but as I have already pointed out, on so narrow a qualification that very
few
indeed can serve, and the number of women who are now administering our Education
Act and giving a service which no one can contest is a valuable one has gone down to
hundreds when it used to be thousands* (Parliamentary Debates, Lords I9i4 $& Series,vol.
xvi, p. 52).
519
DOMESTIC ANARCHY
the Liberal statesmen by an unceasing series of demonstrations.
And their anger increased when Campbell-Banner man who was
in favour of their cause was succeeded as Prime Minister by an
opponent of women suffrage who had hardly entered on his new
office when he took an opportunity to state his position. A
Women s Enfranchisement Bill had just passed its second reading
in the House of Commons. 1 Asquith stated that it would be im
possible during the present session to provide the necessary time
for its further discussion. The only prospect he held out was that
before the dissolution of the Parliament elected in 1906 in other
words, within the next four years, the Government would intro
duce a Bill to reform the male franchise and the supporters of
women suffrage would be at liberty to propose whatever amend
ments they desired to give effect to their views. 2
The women organized monster processions through the
London streets which often mingled with the columns of unem
ployed. They besieged the Houses of Parliament, the government
offices, the Ministers private houses, lying in wait for prominent
politicians, tormenting them with the monotonous repetition of

their demands, haunting them with their presence. They never
ceased harassing Liberal public meetings until Lloyd George,
against whom their persecution was chiefly directed, announced
his intention not to speak at meetings from which all women had
not been excluded. They rose in the women s gallery of the House
of Commons and interrupted the debates, whatever their subject,
by screaming at the top of their voices Votes for Women One .
day two suffragettes chained themselves to the grille which en

closed the gallery and while they continued to bawl and hold up
the debate workmen had to be summoned to remove the grille
and the women with it. The women s gallery was then closed
until the day not long afterwards when male feminists made the
same scenes in the men s gallery which had in turn to be closed.
The suffragettes exploited the weakness of their sex, its proneness
to hysteria. The men were cowards if they allowed them to be
have in this way, cowards if they used force to repress their dis
orders.
1
H. of C., February 28, 1908. Stranger s motion (Parliamentary Debates, 4th Series, vol.
cbootv, pp. 212 sqq.).
2
May 20, 1908. Reply to a deputation of 60 Liberal Members of Parliament, supporters
ofwcmen suffrage also H. of C., May 28, 1908 reply to Alfred Hutton (ibid., vol. clxxxiv,
p. 962..
520
THE FEMINIST REVOLT
A Public Meetings Bill1 hastily passed by both Houses in
December 1908 which provided special penalties for those who
disturbed public meetings completely failed to achieve the purpose
which the guardians of order should have kept in view. What
they had to avoid as far as was the odium of imprisoning
possible
the suffragettes. An order was given to the metropolitan police to
arrest them but release them before they were brought into court.
They then adopted new tactics to force the authorities hands.
Assaults on policemen and breaking windows were typical
offences which they committed in cold blood in order to get
themselves imprisoned. They were duly imprisoned, went on
hunger strike and by their violent struggles made forcible feeding
impossible. Ill, almost at death s door, they were released. As
soon they had recovered their health, they committed a new

as
outrage. What could be done with them except send them back
to prison? But what purpose did it serve? A feminist of noble
.
family, Lady Constance Lytton, was imprisoned but immediately

sent to the infirmary on account of her ill health and soon released.
She persuaded herself that she owed this leniency to her social
herself arrested a second time under a false name
position. She got
and was subjected to the ordinary treatment, refused all nourish
ment and fell so seriously ill that though released she never re
covered her health. A new chapter had opened in the history of
feminism and its martyrs.
12
The picture we drew of the struggle between the two parties

between 1909 and 1911 on the double question of Lloyd George s
was
Budget and the restriction of the rights of the House of Lords
not therefore complete. We must also picture the Liberal party-
tormented without respite under the mocking gaze of their
Unionist opponents by a swarm of buzzing and stinging gnats.
The persecution was interrupted only by a brief truce of six months
when on the accession of George V all parties agreed to allow the
new monarch to make his first essays in sovereignty amidst a
universal peace. A group of Members of Parliament
formed a
1
8 Edw, 7, Cap. 66: An Act to prevent Disturbances of Public Meetings (Public Meet-
ings Act, 1908). It had been

Commons
introduced in the by Lord Robert Cecil (H. of C.,
December 17, 19, 1908; Parliamentary Debates, 4th Series, vol. cxcviii, pp. 2168 sqq.,
2328 sqq.)-
521
DOMESTIC ANARCHY
committee which entitled itself the Conciliation Committee to
draw up a Women s Enfranchisement Bill sufficiently moderate
to reassure the Unionist supporters of women suffrage and suffi
ciently comprehensive to overcome

the opposition of those
Liberals who considered the Suffrage Bills hitherto presented too
undemocratic. Stanger s Bill, which had been debated in the
House of Commons in 1908, was open to the objection that it

a vote and therefore aggra
multiplied the -grounds qualifying for
vated the abuse of the plural vote to the profit of the wealthy
classes :
property owner, lodger, university graduate, the rich
as a
woman could by arrangement with her husband secure two or
three additional votes for the family. Moreover, the Bill permitted
a married woman to claim a distinct vote when the rent paid for
the domicile exceeded 20, another privilege for the wealthy.
The Conciliation Bill introduced in June 1910 by a Labour
member, Shackleton, was not open to these objections.
The franchise it proposed to give women would be based not .
on the complicated qualifications hitherto prescribed but simply

on occupation of a domicile. All women who were householders
would possess the vote, all that is to say, who occupied a house or
part of a house, even if it were only a single room, provided it
was in their own name, or occupied a shop or office whose rental
was not less than 10. Not many however would come under
the latter category. Not more than 5 per cent, Shackleton esti
mated. In this way the danger, real or imaginary, on which the
Liberals harped, of artificially multiplying votes to the benefit of
the rich,would be avoided. Shackleton moreover considered that
the number of women who would benefit by a measure of this
description had been under-estimated. They would amount he
maintained to about a million and he claimed that by methodical
it had been
investigations proved that 75 to 80 per cent of the
women would belong to the working class. 1
enfranchised
The Bill passed its second reading on July 12 by 299 to 190 votes.
Asquith had spoken against it, also Lloyd George and Churchill.
The latter were not indeed
intransigent opponents of women
suffrage. At bottom Lloyd George was in favour of the reform.
But they had been exasperated by the attacks of the suffragettes.
1 H. of C, June 14, 1910. Shackleton s motion, and the passage of the first reading of the
Bill.July 11-12 the Bill passes its second reading (Parliamentary Debates, Commons TOJI,
5th Series, vol. xvii, pp. 1202 sqq., vol. xiv, pp. 41 sqq.). For the character of the Bill see
H. N. Brailsford, Woman Suffrage. The Conciliation BUI An Explanation and Defence, 1910.
522
THE FEMINIST REVOLT
Lloyd George was the victim of an unremitting persecution.

Churchill had been assaulted in the street by a fanatical suffragette
armed with a whip. Moreover, Lloyd George s objection was not
without foundation. While he was prepared to vote in favour of
the principle of women suffrage, he wanted the Bill, which he
regarded as insufficiently democratic, drawn up in such terms
that it could be amended in course of debate and completed by
1
clauses extending the franchise to all classes of men. This was
done by the Second Conciliation Bill introduced in the Commons
on May 5, 1911, by Sir George Kemp, which passed its second
reading by 255 to 88 votes. What would happen during the ses
sion of 1912? Lloyd George, speaking apparently in the name of

the Government, promised die necessary time to debate the
clauses and pass the third reading of the Bill. Asquith did not dis
sent but replying on November 9 to a deputation which waited
on him to plead the cause of universal suffrage he promised a Bill
to reform the franchise on the lines they desired into which the
supporters of women suffrage
would be allowed but not encour
aged by the Government to introduce any
amendments they
could get the House to accept.
On March 28, 1912, the Conciliation Bill came up once more
in the Commons. In the previous session it had been passed by a
majority of 167. It was now defeated by a majority of fourteen,

222 to 208 votes. Is this change of front on the part of the majority
to be explained by the exasperation aroused by the suffragettes
rather due to the pressure which
extravagant behaviour ? Or was it
to bear on certain members of the
Asquith and his friends brought
Liberal majority, the Irish Nationalists in particular, to vote
against the Bill

or abstain from voting? In any case the way was
now free for Asquith to introduce his general measure of fran
chise reform into which, indeed, a feminist amendment might,
he be introduced
said, he was counting on the House of
though
Commons not to stultify itself and by going back on its decision 3
of March 28 commit what he termed a national mistake . The

Government s Franchise Bill which passed its second reading on
votes came up for its third reading on
July 12 by 290 to 218
the end of an interminable session whose
January 24, 1913, at
work, held up by the Irish question which now occupied
the
1 Commons 1910, 5& Series, vol. xix,

H. of C, July 12, 1910 (Parliamentary Debates,
P- 305).
523
DOMESTIC ANARCHY
front of the stage, had not been completed by December 31. The
Government did not indeed propose to introduce universal suff
rage. But by suppressing the plural vote
and the representation of
the universities, and by a radical alteration of the method by
which the register was compiled, the Bill practically amounted
to a universal suffrage Bill. It would moreover confer a more or
less extensive franchise on women, if one or other of four amend
ments accepted by the Prime Minister were embodied in it. But

at this juncture a dramatic blow fell. Some days before the debate
opened Bonar Law, the Leader of the Opposition, had asked the
Speaker, referring to a precedent of Parliamentary procedure,
whether such a radical alteration of the Bill as amendments of this
kind would involve was not unconstitutional. He had requested a
few days in which to consider the question .
1
On the 2yth he
decided in favour of Bonar Law s objection and refused to allow
any of the amendments to be discussed. Asquith was obliged to
drop the Bill. On- the other hand, he could not bring it forward
again with one of the feminist amendments embodied in the
original text, for he himself and many others of his Cabinet and
party were hostile to them. All he could do was to promise that
if a Bill on similar lines to that which Sir George Kemp had intro
duced in May 1912 were again brought forward, the Government
without sponsoring it would set apart as much time for its discus
sion as though it were a Government Bill. This was to return to
the promise made by Lloyd George in 1911 which had resulted
in the adverse vote of March 28, 1912.
Always the same vicious
circle.
13
Indignation in the feminist camp was at its height. For several

years the moderates of the National Union had given their confi
dence to Asquith and his party. They now broke with the Liberals
and decided to support the Labour party, the only one of the three
which had made women suffrage a part of its official programme.
X
H. of C., January 23, 1913 (Parliamentary Debates, Commons 1913, 5th Series, vol.
xlvii,
pp._643 sqq.).
Lord Ullswater s account (A Speakers Commentaries, vol. i, pp. 136-7)
is not
quite accurate in as much as he gives us to understand that on the 22nd and 25th
everything took place in private conversations between Bonar Law, Asquith and himself.
The Tories had already raised the difficulty a year earlier but had admitted a few days
later tha^ it could be overcome.
(E. Sylvia Pankhurst, The Suffragette Movement, p. 371.)
524
THE FEMINIST REVOLT
The leaders of the party accepted their support without enthu
siasm, for condemned the party to an attitude of uncompromis
it
ing hostility to the Liberals, which it had no desire to adopt. But

the women had the money the party lacked and so profitable an
alliance could not be refused. Throughout the country at by-
elections Labour candidates came forward who secured the defeat
of the Liberal candidate either to their own advantage or the
advantage of the Conservative candidate. And the suffragettes
who fought under the Pankhursts banner redoubled the number
and violence of their outrages.
Their agitation assumed new forms. Banished from the gallery
of the House of Commons they turned their persecution against a
more highly placed victim. In the theatre, at church, even at
Buckingham Palace the King was roughly addressed by unknown *
women who rose to denounce him as Czar and torturer Corro .
sives were placed in letter boxes to destroy the correspondence.

Pictures were defaced in Museums. Buildings were set on fire
whether they belonged to notorious opponents of feminism or
were simply adjacent to a house where a Liberal meeting was
being held. Shots were fired at trains. Then the suf&agettes
attacked churches, in which they placed bombs which did con
siderable damage. Two old country churches were burnt down.
Friends of law and order consoled themselves by the reflection
that these extremists were injuring the cause they professed to
serve. In 1913 and 1914 the only result achieved by the feminist
agitation seemed to have been

to torpedo the Government s Bill
to extend the franchise. The Cabinet resigned itself to introducing,
as in 1907, a Bill to abolish the plural vote which, twice thrown
out by the House of Lords, was waiting for the session of 1915 to
receive the royal assent without passing the Upper House. Mean
while a Bill in favour of women suffrage was rejected by the
Lords in 1914 after debates interesting indeed, but as academic as
1
they could have been in the lifetime of Campbell-Bannerman.
Moreover, the Conservatives had the satisfaction of observing
that the violent methods employed by the Social and Political
Union were alarming an increasing number of its members. There
had been a split in 1908 when Mrs. Despard founded a separate
group, the Women s Freedom League. A more serious split
1 H. of L., May 5, 6, 1914 (Parliamentary Debates, Lords 1914, 5& Series, vol. xvi, pp. 7
sqq., 6<5
sqq.).
525
DOMESTIC ANARCHY
occurred when in 1912 Mr. and Mrs. Pethick Lawrence, a couple
of feminists with Socialist sympathies, retired from the Union,
withdrawing their paper, The Common Cause, from the influence

of the extremists. And there was a further split in 1914 when
Sylvia Pankhurst, the founder of the East End federation, broke
with her mother and ChristabeL But it could not be denied that
those who remained were, like Gideon s soldiers, though fewer,
more formidable.
What could be done? The Government hastily passed in April
1913 an Act which empowered the courts to order the discharge
from prison of a woman whose health was endangered as the
result of a hunger strike, subject to her reimprisonment without
further trial when her health had been restored. 1 It became known
and mouse Bill. Its authors hoped that the women after
as the cat
of prison and the hunger strike would shrink
their first experience
from a second. This was true of some but not of the majority or
the more ardent. Mrs. Pankhurst, held responsible, as Chairman
of the Social and Political Union, for one of the first cases of
feminist incendiarism, had been sentenced to nine years imprison
ment and it was to prove that the sentence was intended to be a
reality from which she could not escape by a fortnight s hunger
strike that the cat and mouse Bill had been
passed. But the only
result was that for a whole the mouse
year played with the cat
rather than the cat with the mouse. Once more what was to be
done? Pass a measure making all the subscribers to the Social and
Political Union
civilly liable for the damage committed? Could
anyone believe that the prospect of trials by the hundred would
act as a deterrent? Pass a Bill in one
clause absolving the prison
authorities from all
responsibility for the lives of prisoners who
refused to take nourishment? Was it certain that
any of the
prisoners would recoil from sacrificing her life? Derby Day On
in 1913 they had seen a
suffragette adopt a new form of propa
ganda by action, throw herself beneath -the feet of the horses and
die from the wounds received. In the case of Miss Davidson on
Derby Day 1913 feminist fanaticism was still confined to volun

tary martyrdom. But when the suffragettes placed a bomb in a
church, set fire to a house or fired at a train in motion,
though
1
3 Gco. 5, Cap. 4: An Act to provide for the
Temporary Discharge of Prisoners whose
forther detention in prison is undesirable on account of the condition of
their health
(Prisons [Temporary Dischargefor Ul Health] Aft, 1913.)
526
THli IRISH REVOLT
they took care that the church or house was empty, and the train
a
goods train, they were a

playing dangerous game. Who could be
certain that some zealot might not soon commit a murder? At the
annual congress of the Union of Teachers in April 1914 when it
refused to pass a motion in favour of women suffrage Miss Hewitt
of East Ham declared amidst uproar that the power of tyranny
was tempered by assassination 1 A painful conflict was in process
.
between British toleration and the fanaticism of the suffragettes.

Not to have prevented the latter was a defeat for the former.
And now what could be done to avoid further defeats? Yield and
franchise to women as though the methods employed
grant the
by its supporters had been legal? That would be
to capitulate to
violence, to pay tribute to revolutionary fanaticism. Repel viol

ence by violence. Even if successful would that be a victory?
Would it not rather be a defeat,an admission that the Russian not
the British methods of government were the right ones ? Wait
and by employing a minimum of repression attempt to exhaust
in the history of
by patience this strange frenzy, unprecedented
modern England? Was it certain that it would be exhausted? The
evil certainly showed no sign of diminution in July 1914. Never
had acts of violence and incendiarism been more frequent.
Ill THE IRISH REVOLT
When the summer of 1914 opened, the threat of a general

the miners railwaymen s,
strike called by the Triple Alliance of ,
alarm
and transport workers unions weighed onEngland. But the
which had occurred in
felt was due to memory of the disorders
was less
1911. For the moment the
labour unrest certainly grave
on the
than it had been three years before. The suffragist agitation
more pestering than ever But if it
contrary was more irritating,
of which it
contributed to the general unrest, and if the changes
the most
was apparently the symptom were perhaps profound
a source of
which society was undergoing, these disorders were
the Government
embarrassment rather than a serious threat to
wasin Ireland that the anarchy was on the point of
It general
1
The Times, April 17, 1914-
\ OL VI 19 527
DOMESTIC ANARCHY
degenerating, had indeed begun to degenerate,

into civil war. To
understand the origin of the crisis there is no need, as in the case of
the feminist agitation, to delve into past history. For this was not
an agitation which sprang suddenly upon the world of politics.
How many times already had Irish history, while remaining ob
stinately apart from the current
ofEnglish, hampered and poisoned
the latter? We have already related the course of events to the day
when the Liberal Government shortly before Campbell-Banner-
man s death had been confronted on the one hand with the defeat
of its Irish Council Bill, on the other with the failure at least par
tial of the
attempt made by the late Unionist Government in 1903
to transfer gradually and peaceably the entire soil of Ireland to the
native tenants.
During the years which followed, the Nationalist party re
mained faithful to its policy of alliance with the Liberals, awaiting
a favourable opportunity to summon the latter to honour a long
standing pledge and grant Home Rule to Ireland. We have told

the story of the crisis which followed the rejection of Lloyd
George s great Budget by the House of Lords and pointed out that
the two General Elections of January and December 1910 had
apparently made the Irish masters of the situation. When the ses
sion of 1912 opened, the Government was free to pass the Home
Rule Bill through the House of Commons by the disciplined
combination of Liberals, Labour members, and Nationalists and
this once done could defy a House of Lords now rendered
power
less. But to understand the details of the crisis which ensued we
must discover what authority John Redmond and his party pos
sessed in Ireland at a moment when their influence in the British
Parliament was in the ascendant.
The first enemies with whom Redmond had to contend were
the moderates led by William O Brien who had helped Gerald
Balfour and after him George Wyndham to pursue, while the
Unionists were in office, their policy of devolution But
. O
Brien s
party had been weakened by the
invincible hostility the Ulster
Protestants displayed towards the
attempts at conciliation made
by the Tory Cabinet and still further by the Liberal victory at
the Election of 1906. Once more were kindled in Ireland
hopes
of concessions which would far exceed the offers made
by certain
English Conservatives and would not stop short of complete
autonomy. It was in vain that O Brien attempted to exploit
528
THE IRISH REVOLT
against Redmond the defeat of the Irish Council Bill and his
acquiescence in the failure which had befallen the Land Act of
1903. Instead of accepting with an ill-concealed delight the defeat

of a measure which he continued to defend warmly and
persisting
in its claims for immediate and
complete Home Rule the Nation
alists, he maintained, should have
accepted the Irish Council Bill
and in return have demanded that the English
taxpayer should
provide the funds necessary to bring back into operation the Land
Act of 1903 As we have already seen he had been finally
.
compelled
to surrender to Redmond. But was the surrender unconditional?
The terms of reconciliation contained a clause, the second,
which laid down that it was the duty of the Nationalist represen
tatives of
Ireland, while striving incessantly for Home Rule, to
devote themselves earnestly to working for every measure of
practical amelioration which it might be possible to obtain for her
people from either English party, or from both/ and it could be
interpreted as a concession to O
Brien s opportunism. The clause
enumerated among the most urgent reforms, a settlement of the
University question satisfactory to Catholics, measures to hasten
the expropriation of the landlords, and a reduction of taxation. If
Redmond and his followers, having torpedoed the Irish Council
Bill, failed to obtain satisfaction on. any of these points, it would
be a proof that their method was the wrong one and O Brien s
more effective.
For the moment the third question did not come before Parlia
ment. As we had been completely
shall shortly see, its aspect
changed by the passing of the important measures of social reform

in 1908 and 1911, But this was not the case with the two former,
particularly the University question, and it was

a triumph for the
reunited Nationalist party, a defeat therefore for O
Brien, when
in 1908 the Government introduced a Bill calculated to give final
satisfaction both to the Irish Protestants and the Irish Catholics.
The question had first been tackled by Bryce, who had submitted
it to the examination of a Committee of nine, which by a majority
of six to three proposed to incorporate all the existing Irish col

either to
leges in a single University. It was a solution unacceptable
Trinity College, the citadel of Protestantism in Dublin which was
not prepared to surrender its independence, or to the Catholic
Bishops who wanted a College of their own
in the capital on an
equal footing with the Protestant, The

new Bill which Birrell
529
DOMESTIC ANARCHY
xplained in the House of Commons

on March 31, 1908, abol-
shed the Royal University of Ireland, made the Belfast College
vhich had formed part of it hitherto, a separate university, set up
. new college in Dublin on an equality with Trinity and com-
>letely
distinct from it, and incorporated this new. college and the
;olleges of Cork
and Galway into a single University. To receive
State assistance these two new universities, Dublin and Belfast,
nust be undenominational. Nor could the State grant be em
ployed to support a building where any form of worship would
oe carried on or any theological teaching given. But Trinity
College was undenominational in theory and in practice Protes

was equally certain that the University of Belfast would
tant. It
be Presbyterian and the new Dublin University "Catholic, both

in the composition of its professorial staff and in the spirit of its
teaching. The sole guarantee of religious neutrality contained in
the Bill was a provision that the senates of the two universities,
first few years at least, should be
during the appointed by the
Government. And the Government took care to appoint one
Catholic among the thirty-five members of the Belfast Senate,
seven Protestants among the thirty-six members of the Dublin
Senate. The Irish Bishops had the wisdom to accept a compromise
which gave them in substance what they wanted. In London
Liberals and Unionists agreed in approving the Bill and in a few
months the British Parliament rid itself of a problem which for
many years had appeared insoluble.
The
question of the Land Act was tackled at the same time. 1 It
was impossible to postpone any longer. it The continuous fall in

the value of consols made
the Act of 1903 increasingly costly to
operate both to the British Treasury and the Irish ratepayer. The
Government at first adopted a circuitous route and its attitude
appeared to show a determination not to modify but to reinforce
the agrarian legislation begun in 1903. phrase in the King s A
speech of January 1908, as interpreted by the then Chancellor of
the Exchequer, Asquith, promised a measure to
expedite the divi
sion of the pasture land into small holdings. The Congested Dis-
1 For a
bibliography see Book i, p. 54 .
530
THE IRISH REVOLT
trictsActs had already dealt with the problem, but they were
applicable only within narrow limits and were moreover permis
sive. The principle of compulsory purchase of the grazing land
would be laid down. But almost immediately the Committee
1
appointed to inquire into the working of the Land Act of I903
reported and the report pointed out that the public finances
demanded a complete remodelling of its provisions. The Com
mittee proposed in substance that to pay for purchases already
made which could not be undone a limited amount of Land
Stock should continue to be issued, the landlord whose land
was being purchased having the right to be paid in Land Stock at
a rate of ^92 for every nominal ^100. For future purchase it
proposed a new type of stock at 3 per cent, and since the 3 per
cent was at par, it was hoped to avoid difficulties arising from an
eventual depreciation in value. Moreover, to be on the safe side
and make further provision against this risk the report recom
mended that the new shares should never be issued below par,
and if it should become impossible to maintain this restriction,
the landowner who wanted to sell should have the right to be
paid in shares bearing 3 per cent interest on their face value. The
bounty .payable to the purchaser must also be reduced. This
should be effected by establishing a sliding scale by which the
cheaper the landlord sold, the higher the bounty he received. On
the other hand, the annuities to be paid by the tenant purchaser
must be raised from 3J to 3f per cent of the cost of purchase. A
Bill was accordingly introduced by the Government in Novem
ber. It contained a number of provisions giving effect to the Com
mittee recommendations2 and others besides. The Treasury

s
would be made responsible for the costs hitherto chargeable to

the Irish ratepayers in virtue of a clause in the Act of 1903 whose
application had caused such discontent. The relief thus given
to
the ratepayer was estimated at ^7,000,000. The Bill further made
the Congested Districts Board a body possessed of a legal per
3
sonality, a corporation invested with more extensive powers
1 Irish Land Purchase Finance. Report of the Departmental Committee appointed to inquire into
Irish Land Purchase Finance in Connection with the provision of Funds required for the Purposes
of the Irish Land Act, 1903, February 18, 1908.
2
With certain modifications. For example the annuities payable by the purchasers were
raised from 3 J to 3^ (not sf).
3 For further details of these innovations which became law in
1909 see W. L. Micks,
An Account of the Constitution, Administration and Dissolution of the Congested Districts Beard
for Ireland.from i891 to 1923, 1925, pp. 120 sqq.
531
DOMESTIC ANARCHY
and gave the Estates Commissioners the right to effect under cer
tain definite conditions a compulsory purchase of land.
In November 1908 it was too late for the Bill to be debated
session. But it was reintro-
seriously before the end of the autumn
duced with hardly any alterations at the beginning of the follow
ing session. The two clauses which relieved
the Irish ratepayer and
established the principle of compulsory purchase enabled Red
mond to support a measure which proclaimed the partial failure
of that Act of 1903 of which he had been a hearty supporter. For
John Dillon, who had always been hostile to the Act of 1903, the
new Statute was a triumph. By accepting the Bill of 1903 Red
mond had surrendered to O Brien. By accepting the Bill of 1909
he surrendered to Dillon. The Bill passed after debates spread
over considerable intervals and never heated. 1 The battle over
Lloyd George s Budget had opened, attention was elsewhere.
O Brien however did not resign himself to the failure of a
measure which he regarded as in a sense his own work. The Com
mittee s report had scarcely been published when he called a
meeting at Dublin of the parliamentary party to demand a mixed
conference between representatives of the party and representa
tives of the landlords at which an attempt would be made to
devise, in opposition to the Government s solution, a solution

more favourable to Irish interests. Defeated by forty-two votes
to fifteen he attempted to do alone what he had failed to do in
collaboration with the entire parliamentary group, and called for
on August 5, 1908, a large meeting of representatives of the tenants
and the landlords, who appointed a joint deputation to lay before
the English Government the grievances of those Irishmen who
wished to maintain the essential provisions of the Land Act of
1903. The deputation obtained nothing. O Brien was howled
down at a National Convention held in Dublin on Feburary 9,
1909, and feeling himself irretrievably defeated he shortly after
wards resigned his membership of the party and of Parliament.
But it was not long before he returned to his favourite strategy
of setting up an organization in opposition to the Nationalists and
he founded an All for Ireland League to oppose his old foundation,
the United Irish League, of which Devlin had taken
possession.
He found a valuable helper in a leading business man of Dublin,
*
9 Edw. 7, Cap. 8; An Act to amend the Law relating to the Occupation and Owner
ship of Land in Ireland and for other purposes relating thereto (Irish Land Act, 1909).
532
THE IRISH REVOLT
W. M. Murphy, who had quarrelled with the Nationalist leaders
and had founded in opposition to thek Freeman s
Journal, a rival
paper, the Irish Independent, which had already become a serious
rival to the former. He found another in Tim
Healy, an inveterate
schismatic, who
after leading an ultra-Catholic
group had for
some years past been drawing closer to O
Brien s moderates. He
denounced the bad faith of Dillon whom not without good rea
son he regarded as the author of the new policy pursued at present
by the official party. If Dillon accepted the Land Act of 1909 it
was not astonishing. Had he not always hated the Land Act of
1903 ? Had he not done his utmost in his county of Mayo to pre
vent it from being successfully worked? 1 With greater success
O Brien exploited against Redmond and Dillon the unpopu
larity of the 1909 Budget. Not only was Ireland, as we have seen,
protectionist and on this point in agreement with the English
Unionists, but the increase in the duty on spirits aroused strong
opposition throughout the towns and country districts of Ireland.
At the General Election he won an initial triumph by securing the
return of eleven members in County Cork on his programme
of political conciliation and economic reform.
According to O Brien and his followers the most urgent reform
was not political separation from Great Britain but the transfor
mation of the rural proletariat into a population of small peasant
holders and the Land Act of 1909 would, he contended, have the
effect, perhaps designed by its authors, of bringing to a standstill
the great movement of land purchase in process since 1903. Was
his contention borne out by the facts? The statistics are not easy
to interpret. 2 For in 1908 and 1909 when everyone expected a
measure which would make land purchase less profitable to ven
dor and buyer alike there had been such a rush to purchase land
on the terms laid down by the doomed Statute of 1903 that in any
case a reaction during the next few years was inevitable; and it
was certainly no small measure of success for the land purchase
scheme that when the War broke out two-thirds of the arable land
had already changed hands. In any case after this slight success at
the Election ofJanuary 1910 O Brien s influence steadily declined.
1
Captain D. D, Sheeham, Ireland since Powell, pp. 188-9.
2
See the divergent conclusions reached by Erskine Childers, The Framework of Home
Ride, p. 3 14. Justin Phillips, The New Peasant Ireland. I. "Land Purchase (The Irish Review;
a monthly magazine of Irish Literature, and Science, February 1913, vol. ii, pp. 635 sqq.).
Art>
The Land Purchase Deadlock (March 12, 1913; vol. Hi, pp. 81 sqq.).
533
DOMESTIC ANARCHY
In a Parliament in which the Unionist and Liberal forces were
evenly balanced the seventy-three official Nationalists were
masters of the situation, the true victors of the Election and we
have seen how during the ensuing months Redmond s authority
steadily increased. He dominated the debates
in the House of
Commons, and brought about the failure of the joint- Liberal and
Unionist conference which for several months caused him serious
anxiety. The December Election followed. O Brien had hoped to
win twenty seats. But he could put no more than twelve candi
dates in the field, among them an English Tariff Reformer, and
kept only eight seats, all in the district of Cork. Throughout the
United Kingdom the position of the parties
remained
unchanged.
Redmond was still in a position to dictate his terms to the Cabinet.
And the December Election had brought him the further gain of
a formal undertaking by the Liberal and Labour members to
introduce a Home Rule Bill in the new Parliament. The opposi
tion of the House of Lords was no longer serious, since it was
paralysed from the outset by the Parliament Bill passed in 1911.

In 1913 the Government brought in a Land Bill which, if it had
passed, would have given new vigour to the movement to expro
priate the landlord. But it was a mere formality introduced at the
closeof the Session. 1 And though it was reintroduced in 1914, it
was once more ^ formality. It was soon dropped. 2 Dillon con
tinued his campaign against the policy of conciliation pursued by
the followers of Lord Dunraven, Sir Horace Plunkett, and
O Brien, 3 and under his influence, favoured as it was by the situa
tion, the official party succeeded in concentrating the entire atten
tion of the masses in Ireland on the single question of Home Rule.
The methods advocated by O Brien and his friends were presen
ted as out of date. There must be no longer any suggestion of
going to Westminster cap in hand to beg the alms of a few imme
diate material benefits. The day was at hand when an independent
Parliament in Dublin would deal with the land question as it
pleased.
1
H. of C., July 21, 1913 (Parliamentary Debates, Commons 1913, 5th Series, vol. Iv,
pp. 1722 sqq.).
2
H. of C.July 20, 21, 22, 1914 (ibid., Commons 1914, vol. Ixv, pp. 208, 261, 428).
8
Some Phases of the Irish Question* (Round Table, March 1912, pp. 332 sqq. Round
Table, June 1913, p. 509). Sidney Brooks Aspects of the Irish Question (Fortnightly Review,
November 1911; New Series, vol. xc, pp. 826 sqq.). See also the obituary notice ofJohn
Dillon in The Times, August 10, 1927.
534
THE IRISH REVOLT
To sum up: When in 1911 the battle between the two Houses
ended, Redmond had nothing more tofear from Brien. But in O
another quarter the horizon was perhaps not so clear and dangers
threatened which might one day prove serious. By his unyield
ing attitude on the question of Home Rule and his opposition
to a policy of compromise Redmond, who, if he had ever
been a revolutionary, was a revolutionary no longer, himself put
at the mercy of the was all very well for him
revolutionaries. It
to promise that the Protestants would have nothing to suffer from
Home Rule. He was the ally, indeed the leader, of all the Catholic
1
zealots in Ireland. And though he had been moulded by the
civilizing influence of twenty years of Parliamentary life, the fact

remained that he was identified with the United Irish League
which Devlin had wrested from O Brien and which as soon as
the Land Act of 1909 had been passed had revived the campaign of
agrarian outrages. If his policy were in the end defeated in the

British Parliament, could he without losing his popularity at a
stroke accept the defeat, even temporarily, now that the consti
tutional barrier to the passing of a Home Rule Bill had been re
moved? And if he did not accept it, on what grounds could he
counsel prudence when the Irish called upon him to lead a revo
lutionary movement?
In fact, the policy of extreme courses never dead in Ireland was
acquiring at this time fresh vigour. For the reasons mentioned
above the year 1909 had been to a certain extent propitious to
O Brien and his following. In 1910 the situation was reversed
and in the reaction against O Brien s policy of moderation Red
mond ran the risk of being himself outstripped and charged with
being too moderate. The submission of the question of the House
of Lords to a conference composed of Liberals and Unionists in
equal numbers from which the Nationalists were excluded was
calculated to alarm the latter. Then strange rumours got abroad
of what was happening, if not at the conference itself, at least in
its
purlieus. Certain of its members, it was reported Balfour
was
1
See Redmond s remarks in a conversation with Wilfred Scawen Blunt on February
13, 1910: *In Ireland the defeat of the Government would be hailed with delight. There
will be bonfires lit on every hill in Ireland. The alliance with the Liberals was very un
popular and the people wanted a fighting policy again for Home Rule.* (Wilfred Scawen
Blunt, My Diaries, vol. ii, p. 301.)
535
DOMESTIC ANARCHY
mentioned on the Unionist side, Lloyd George on the Liberal
had been attracted by the idea of applying this method of a com
mittee of conciliation which had just settled the problem of the
unification of South Africa and might perhaps settle the conflict
between the two Houses, to the problem of the relations between
Great Britain and Ireland. Why should it not be examined by
another conference of similar composition? Might it not be pos
sible to devise by amicable negotiations a solution which would
satisfy the desires

of the Irish and the interests of the British people?
The sessions of Parliament were congested by the constantly in
creasing number of questions whose settlement
was urgent. Why
not remedy the congestion by setting up subordinate Parliaments
not only in Ireland but in Scotland, Wales, and England itself?
When this Home Rule All Round was in operation the work of
the Parliament of Westminster would be confined to matters
which concerned the United Kingdom and the Empire as a whole,
fiscal questions, foreign politics, the army and navy. A number
of speeches delivered by Liberal politicians at public meetings
suggested that they found this programme attractive. In July
Birrell hinted at the possibility of incorporating Irish Home Rule
1
in a wider scheme of imperial federation. At this juncture a
Scottish National Manifesto informed the public that a National
Scottish party was in existence at least in embryo. 2 In his youth
Lloyd George had been a Welsh Nationalist of a sort, and a
speech he delivered in September showed that he had not changed
his views. 3 Moreover in October the Conservative Press, as
though in obedience to an order from headquarters, adopted a

conciliatory attitude towards the Irish Nationalists. And when
4
Redmond who was travelling in the United States, in an inter

view which he gave on October 4 to the New York correspon
dent of the Daily Express, expressed himself in terms which could
1
Speech at the Eighty Club, July 25, 1910: To drag Ireland in the wake of England was
downright stupid policy. He believed that federation beginning here at home, as it was
called, was ripening for rapid and speedy decision. Such a federation once established
would be able to find room for our Dominions overseas as and when they wished to come
in. We should then have a truly Imperial Parliament.
2
Speech at the Eighty Club, July 25, 1910. Cf. the Master of Ellibank s speech at Bel
fast, October 18, 1910. In 1913 a Government of Scotland Bill setting up in Scotland a system
of Home Rule or of devolution at least passed the formality of a second reading in the
House of Commons (H. of C, May 30, 1913; Parliamentary Debates, Commons 1913, 5th
Series, vol.
liii, pp. 471 sqq.).
3
Speech at Cefnddwysarn Chapel, September 20, 1910.
4
See in particular the Observer, October and six articles in Tlie Times signed Pacificus
16"
on The Constitutional Conference , October 20, 22, 24, 28, 31 and November 2, 1910.
536
THE IRISH REVOLT
be interpreted only as an acceptance of the programme of Home
Rule All Round it looked for a moment as
1
the though politicians
of all parties were prepared to overrule popular passions and effect
an amicable settlement of the question of Home Rule. But it was
not long before these passions once more gained the upper hand.
The Ulster Unionists called upon their English confreres not to
yield
an inch2 and the attitude of the Conservative Press towards
the Irish question once more became adamant. On the
opposite
side Redmond was compelled by his party to disavow the words
put into his mouth by the Daily Express. His attitude, he declared,
3
was the same as PanielTs had been. The programme of devolution

was dead. He had no objection to raise if the imperial Parliament
having granted Home Rule to Ireland, proceeded to extend it to
Scotland, Wales and England but he refused to wait for Irish
Home Rule until the distant day when it might adopt such a far-
reaching solution. Possibly Redmond in 1910 as in 1907 adopted
this uncompromising attitude against his
personal inclination. The
extremists took exception to a speech he delivered at "Waterford
on November 27 in which he asked for a Parliament elected by
the Irish people, with an Executive responsible to it, and with full
control over all purely Irish affairs Parnell, it is true, had accepted
.
the formula, but it was no longer sufficient for men determined

to take nothing less than an immediate grant of complete auto
nomy.
We might be tempted at first sight to regard Sinn Fein as the

centre of this new extremist agitation. 4 This however would be to
misconceive the character of the party. Sinn Fein which lacked, as
ithas always lacked, a great leader was a group of eccentric intel-
1
DailyExpress, October 5, 1910.
a
Meeting of the Joint Committee of the Unionist Association of Ireland, Dublin,
October 18, 1910.
Daily Express, October 18, 19, 1910. We should observe however that in an article
3
published at this very time in MacChtre s Magazine of New York and Nosh s Magazine
of London (See below p. 541 n.) Redmond while claiming for Ireland the status of a
dominion expressed his willingness to leave the customs in the control of the imperial
Parliament.
4
For this revival of extremism in Ireland see Captain H. B. C. Pollard late of the Staff
of the Chief of Police, Ireland, The Secret Societies of Ireland. Their Rise and Progress, 1922.
R. M. Henry, The Evolution of Sinn Pern, 1920, pp. 87 and 90. Captain D. H. Sheeham,
Ireland since Parnell, 1921, pp. 253 sqq.
537
DOMESTIC ANARCHY
lectuals, who refused to commit themselves to any definite
in principle to an armed rising but,
strategy. They did not object
since an insurrection had no chance of success, unless England
were absorbed in the conduct of a war abroad, the question was
for the purely academic interest. The novel tactics
moment of
which in 1906 and 1907 they had loudly and most unsuccessfully
advertised kind of peaceful strike by which Ireland would
were a
organize her own public life and

without violence withdraw
from the operation of English law. They had however consistently
maintained that if at any time the Nationalists should be once
more, as in the days of Parnell, masters of the parliamentary situa
tion and compel the British Parliament
in a position therefore to
to concede Home
Rule they would have no objection to the
employment of this constitutional method. But in 1910 these
conditions seemed to have been fulfilled and Sinn Fein officially
declared that until further notice they would put no obstacles in
the way of Redmond and his followers. For three or four years
1
therefore Sinn Fein was for all practical purposes non-existent.
When later on it re-emerged it was a Sinn Fein rejuvenated and
transformed by the influence of an extremist movement which
came into being about 1910 and had originally nothing in com
mon with Sinn Fein. For though the latter had been founded at
the centenary of the 1798 rebellion it was not a republican group.
It merely refused to regard the Act of Union of 1800 as legal and
demanded a return of the constitution of 1782. But that constitu

tion had been neither republican nor democratic, and Griffith s
Hungarian policy was prepared to accept an English monarch
and an Irish aristocracy. At the outset the Sinn Feiners regarded
with disfavour the birth of a movement both republican and
revolutionary.
The new movement was led by two groups. The first of these,
purely republican, dated from the foundation in the autumn of
1910 of a paper appearing every two months called Irish Freedom,
Saoirseacht na h-Eireann which set out to make Sinn Fein republi
can by reviving the old Fenian party the Irish Republican Brother
hood. The latter, discredited by the acts of violence of which its
members had been guilty, its alliance with Parnell, and condem-
1 From
1910 to 1913 the Sinn Fein party was looked on as a negligible association of
cranks (Captain H. B. C. Pollard, The Secret Societies of Ireland, p. 118). From 1910 to
1913 the Sinn Fein movement was practically moribund* (W. A. Philipps, The Revolution
in Ireland, 1906-1923, p. 88).
538
THE IRISH REVOLT
nation by the hierarchy, had finally joined Sinn Fein in 1906. It
was as a revolt against what was already termed the old Sinn
Fein that it
sprang once more into life. Its heroes were Wolfe
Tone 1
and Robert Emmet the leaders of the 1798 rebellion, its
directing group was called the Wolfe Tone Club, and John Mitchel
and John O Leary the conspirators of 1860. The movement was
undenominational. Its leaders proposed to substitute the com
mon name of Irishmen for that of Catholic or Protestant . The
objective
of the Brotherhood was an Irish Republic, its method,
violent revolution. It therefore soon made common cause with
the Irish Socialist party which had already been in existence for
fourteen years.
We have already had occasion to speak of the foundation in
1896 of this party, at once republican and Socialist, by an excep
tionally hard-headed Irishman, Connolly. We
have also related
how in this critical year 1910, Connolly returned from a lengthy
sojourn in America, and brought back with him the principles
novel to himself and other agitators of the United Kingdom which
he had borrowed from the Industrial Workers of the World and
the French Syndicalists, And we have seen how in the person of
Larkin the Irish Socialist party obtained what the other political
groups lacked, a leader who in his ascendancy over the masses
resembled O Connell and Parnell. But we perhaps laid undue
emphasis on the opposition between its programme of social
revolution and the programme of national emancipation pursued
by Redmond and Devlin. It is true that it had the entire National
istPress against it, that Devlin attempted without very much suc
cess to organize sane trade unions in opposition to the frenzy of
it and shortly
Connolly s great union, that the bishops distrusted
2 us to the
declared open war against it. But all this must not blind
fact that the leading opponent of Larkin and Connolly during the
Dublin strikes was Murphy, an opportunist and friend of O Brien,
whom Redmond and Devlin regarded with little favour. Nor
1
The nationalist R. Barry O
Brien published in 1903 a new edition of Wolfe Tone s
autobiography which he prefaced by a glowing panegyric.

The overthrow of established
it must be judged not only by the
government is a serious affair. The man who attempts
intrinsic justice of his cause but by the practical character of his plans
Was there hope
of success? This is the first question. The introduction concluded with the ambiguous
words: We. live in better times and brighter prospects still are dawning on us (pp. xxix,
because violent methods were
xxx, xxxi). Did O Brien mean that the times were better
no longer necessary or because rebellion had now a likelihood of success ?
2
J. M. Hone, James
Larkin and the Nationalist Party* (Contemporary Review, December
1913; vol. civ, pp. 784 sqq.).
539
DOMESTIC ANARCHY
must we forget that if Larkin and Connolly were hostile to Sinn
Fein was because in their opinion it was anti-Socialist, undemo
it
cratic, and even, since it was prepared to accept an English

1
monarch, unpatriotic. They wanted a violent revolution to free
the Irish worker at a single blow from the yoke of capitalism and
2
England. Should circumstances ever arise in which an armed
rising had any prospect of success, they alone would have the
desperate courage to hazard it. They might indeed prove its vic
tims and others reap the fruits. But they would at least be its
agents and heroes.
We must now return from Dublin to London and attempt to

discover from the public utterances of the political leaders on
what points the British ministers were in agreement with the
Nationalist leaders. When Redmond speaking in the House of
Commons demanded a measure giving to the Irish people the
legislative and executive control of all purely Irish affairs 3 he ,
was simply repeating almost verbally the terms of the pledge

Campbell-Bannerman had given in November 1905 a few days
before Edward VII invited him to form a government. Campbell-
Bannerman had announced his intention of placing the effective
management of Irish affairs in the hands of a representative Irish

4
authority and Asquith on the eve of the Election of January
,
1910, while explicitly safeguarding the indestructible supremacy

of the imperial Parliament, had pledged himself to set up in
Ireland a system of full self-government in regard to purely Irish
5
affairs But in the speeches delivered by these three statesmen
.
even by Asquith in spite of the misgivings, which, as everyone

1
See in the first number of Larkin s paper, The Irish Worker and People s Advocate, his
judgment of Sinn Fein: A party or group which, while pretending to be Irish of the Irish
insults the nation by trying to foist on it not only
imported economics based on false prin
ciples, but which had the temerity to advocate the introduction of foreign capitalists into
this sorely exploited country. Their chief
appeal to the foreign capitalists was that they
should have freedom to employ cheap Irish labour/ For eleven years these self-appointed
prophets and seers have led their army up the hill and led them down again and would
continue to so lead them, if allowed, until the leader was appointed King of Ireland under
the Constitution of 1782. (Quoted by R. M. Henry, The Evolution of Sinn Fein,
p. 92.)
2
James Connolly, Labour in Irish History, 1910. The Recon quest of Ireland, 1911 (collected
in a single posthumous volume entitled, Labour in Ireland, 1917).
8
H. of C, March 30, 1908 (Parliamentary Debates, 4th Series, vol. clxxxvii, p. n<5).
*
Speech at Stirling, November 23, 1905.
5
540
THE IRISH REVOLT
knew, he entertained in regard to Home Rule another formula
made its appearance calculated to encourage the Irish to entertain
more ambitious hopes. In 1907 Campbell-Bannerman had
the Irish, if he were in a position to carry out his inten
promised
tions, the powers that every self-governing colony has
1
Red .
mond had seized hold of the formula. "What

you have done for
Frenchmen Quebec/ he had declared in the House of Com
in
mons what you have done for Dutchmen in the Trans
in 1908,
vaal, you should now do for Irishmen in Ireland/ 2 And when in
1910 Asquith, repeating the language employed by Campbell-
Bannerman in 1907, claimed for his Irish policy the sympathy
of the overwhelming majority of the great Dominions overseas
who have learned how easy it is to combine local autonomy with
3
imperial loyalty he was no doubt encouraged by the fact that
,
at this very time Redmond was employing the same language in

an article he published in an American review. 4 We are not
c
seeking he declared, an alteration of the Constitution or of the

,
Imperial Parliament. We
are simply asking to be allowed to take
our place in the ranks of those other parties to the British Empire
some twenty-eight of them which are governed, so far as
their purely local affairs are concerned, by free and representative
institutions, which are their own/ It was an ambiguous formula,
and the ambiguity was perhaps deliberate. It was not the same
Home Rule confined to purely local affairs
thing to ask for a
and an autonomy of the kind enjoyed by the dominions.
When the principal Colonies had successively obtained parlia
mentary self-government the Statutes by which this autonomy
had been conferred maintained side by side with the Colonial
1
H. of C., February 12, 1907 (Parliamentary Debates, 4th Series, vol. chux, p. 85). The
serious implications of the formula did not escape the opposition which protested against
it next day by the mouth of W.
Long a former Irish Secretary under the Unionist Cabinet
(ibid., vol. clxix, pp. 186-7).
2
H. of C., March 30, 1908 (ibid., vol. clxxxvii, p. 133). Cf. his conversation with Barry
O Brien: I should like to know what Englishmen mean exactly when they ask: "What
do the Irish We
want?" have told them again and again an Irish Parliament and an Irish
Executive for the management of Irish affairs. Englishmen ought to know what a Parlia
ment means; though from the questions which they ask us, one might suppose that the
idea was quite new to them. They have their own Parliament; and there are the Parlia
ments of their Colonies and Dependencies the Australian Commonwealth, New
Zealand, The Cape, Canada, the Transvaal, and so forth. An English statesman has plenty
of examples to study in framing a constitution for Ireland. (Barry O
Brien, Dublin
Castle and the Irish People, 1909, p. 415. Cf. pp. 416, 418, 420.)
3
Speech at Hull, November 25, 1910.
4 What Ireland Wants
(MacClure s Magazine, October 1910), vol. xxxv, p. 691. The
entire article was reprinted in England in the Christmas number of Naslis Magazine.
541
DOMESTIC ANARCHY
ministers responsible to the local parliament a Governor appointed
by the British Government and responsible to it. The Governor

possessed the right to veto
on the instructions of the British
Cabinet, itself obedient to the wishes of the British Parliament,
measures passed by the parliament of the Colony. But no Gover
nor-General has attempted to make use of this right. A free-trade
England had not even prevented the Colonies
from placing duties
on the importation of foreign and even of British products. In
deed, so far as the Australian Colonies were concerned it had for
enactment. 1 Nor had
mally sanctioned the system by an express
London ever attempted to compel the Colonies to contribute to
the military and naval expenditure of the Empire. It was almost as
a beggar that the Government of the mother country had asked
them without very great success for voluntary assistance. No one
in England dreamt of granting Ireland such a measure of freedom.
If, however, there was no question of effecting
between Great
Britain and Ireland such a separation as had been made between
the United Kingdom and a Self-Governing Dominion, was
England prepared to between the two
establish a federal relation
countries, defined as strictly as the relationsbetween Quebec and

Ontario in the Canadian federation, or New South Wales and
2
Victoria in the Commonwealth of Australia? The logic of such
a step involved that universal Home Rule which, as we have
already seen at the close of 1910, suggested itself
to several states
men as a compromise. Short of this there were only such make
shifts as had been embodied in the Bills. of 1885 and 1893. The
former had proposed to set up in Dublin a legislature sovereign
within a restricted sphere while reserving all questions which con
cerned the Empire as a whole to a Westminster Parliament in
which the Irish by a glaring anomaly would not be represented.
The latter envisaged two of members in the West
distinct classes
minster Parliament.One of these, elected by the constituencies of
Great Britain, would have the right to deal with all questions
which did not exclusively concern Ireland, the other fewer in
numbers than the Irish representatives under the Act of Union
would have the right to deal with all questions which did not
36 Viet., Cap. 22: An Act to amend the Law with respect to Customs Duties in the
1
Australian Colonies (Australian Colonies Duties Act, 1873).

* Local
-
powers should be given similar to those enjoyed by the Provinces of Canada*
(Sir Edward Grey, election address, December 1910). Frederick S. Oliver, What Federation
is Not, 1912, p. 81.
542
THE IRISH REVOLT
exclusively concern England, Wales, and Scotland. The Irish

Nationalists would have nothing to do with a universalized Home
Rule which would reduce them to the position of a small-subject
nation, forming part of the United Kingdom on the same footing
as Wales. But they were prepared to accept without too meti
culous a scrutiny of detail any solution which, explicitly or

implicitly repealing the Union, left open the future concession,
sooner or of an independence for which the imprudent for
later,
mula of Campbell-Bannerman and Asquith permitted them to
hope, similar to that possessed by Canada, Australia, New Zea
land, and South Africa. 1
The Government of Ireland Bill introduced on April n, 1912,

gave Ireland a Parliament. It would consist of two Chambers.
There would be a Senate of forty members nominated for eight
years, in the first
instance by the Imperial Government, afterwards
by the Irish. And there would be a Lower House of 164 members

to be elected on the existing franchise in the proportion of one
member for every 27,000 inhabitants, a franchise which the Irish
Parliament might, if it chose, modify later. The financial powers
of the Upper House would be limited like those of the House of
Lords since 1911. In contra-distinction to the English procedure
the members of either house would have the right to speak in the
other. Disagreements between the two Houses would be settled
by a joint session. The Lord-Lieutenant would give

the royal
assent to Bills the Irish legislature,
passed by and would have the
1
For the extension of the Dominion status to Ireland see Erskine Childers, The Frame
work of Home Rule, 1911 especially chap, x, pp. 188 sqq. The Form and Purpose of Home
Rule, 1912, p. 25. The Home Rulers* present tactics were
to exploit Imperialist sentiment.
Erskine Childers, The Framework of Home Rule, 1911, pp. 144-5 - Unionism for Ireland is
colonial autonomy and but yesterday
anti-Imperialist. Its upholders strenuously opposed
were passionately opposing South African autonomy. To-day colonial autonomy is an
axiom. But Ireland is a measure of the depth of these convictions. There could be
no
a little longer to any of
Empire to idealize if their Irish principles had been applied just
their oversea States which constitute the Self-Governing Colonies
of to-day/ T. M.
E. Redmond, 1912, p. 120. *Tue
Kettle, The Open Secret of Ireland with an Introduction byj,
inevitableness of Home Rule resides in the fact that it is, as one might say, biped among
a
foot. If there were
ideas. It marches to triumph on two feet, an Irish and an Imperial p
be necessary in
Ireland no demand whatever for self-government it would nevertheless
the interest of theEmpire to force it on her/ On the other hand, there is an excellent
of
account of the difficulties which the Unionists discovered in the practical application
these formulas in A. V. Dicey s book, A
Fool s Paradise. Being a Constitutionalist s Criticism
of the Home Rule Bill of 1912, 1913.
543
DOMESTIC ANARCHY
right to withhold his assent for whatever period he thought fit.
On the whole it was a constitution of the colonial type. But the
powers of the Irish Parliament were made subject to special res
trictions.
They concerned religion in the first place. The Irish Parliament

was forbidden to establish any denomination or make financial
grants to it, or favour or penalize anyone for his religious beliefs.

The recent promulgation by the Vatican of the Ne Temere decree
which rendered mixed marriages more difficult
by pronouncing
invalid marriages contracted by a Catholic without the presence
of a priest had caused widespread irritation among Protestants
and the Bill therefore provided that the Irish Parliament should
have no power to render the validity of a marriage dependent on
the faith of the parties or the performance of a religious ceremony.
Of greater importance were the provisions which defined the re
lationship between the Irish and Imperial Parliament in such a way
as to secure the
permanent and sovereign interests of the Empire.
The Irish Parliament would possess no competence in questions
regarding the succession to the throne, foreign politics, imperial
defence, the grant of peerages and other honours, coinage or
weights and measures. Moreover, the Imperial Parliament re
served to itself the control of certain branches of the Irish adminis
tration itself; provisionally and for six years only control of the
constabulary; as a temporary measure also, though the Irish Par

liament could not demand its transfer until ten years had elapsed,
the administration of the measures of social reform recently
passed by the British Parliament, the collection of taxes, and legis
lation dealing with savings banks and friendly societies. And land
purchase was permanently reserved. The mention of these latter
reservations has brought us to the problem of the financial rela
tions between Ireland and the rest of the United
Kingdom.
The problem was always a delicate one but its aspect had
changed of recent years. In the past Ireland could justly complain
was exploited by England. This was the case no longer.
that she
The heavy burden of the new taxes just imposed by the Imperial
Parliament fell on the
wealthy and Ireland being a poor country
escaped it. Moreover these taxes had been imposed to defray not
only military expenditure but also the cost of social services by
which Ireland benefited very considerably though she had not
even expressed a desire for them. Old Age Pensions, Labour
544
THE IRISH REVOLT
Exchanges, National Insurance; Ireland, a rural and backward

country, would never have thought of asking for such services
if she had not been drawn into the orbit of her great industrial
1
neighbour. Official statistics proved that during the financial
Ireland paid taxes to the value of 10,350,000,
year 1910-11
and received in administrative services of every description
2
.i2,400,ooo. The Bill therefore set up a complicated financial
system to be in force only so long as the Irish deficit continued.

The total amount of taxes levied in Ireland, together with a further
sum which beginning at 500,000 would decrease annually until
at the expiration of six years it would be fixed at 200,000, would
be paid into the Irish Exchequer . Whatever deficit there might
be would be borne by the Imperial Treasury. It was hoped that it
would become progressively less. The expenditure on the police,
at present exorbitant, would diminish when the country had been
pacified by
Home Rule. Old age pensions would become fewer
as the population continued to decline. And the cost of land pur
chase, if for some time to come it must continue to increase,

would finally be extinguished altogether when the transfer had
been completed. On the other hand, the yield from taxation would
become higher if the economic position of the country improved
and if the Dublin Parliament imposed additional taxation, as the
Bill permitted, provided no new tariffs were imposed. When at
last the Irish Budget was balanced another system would be
3
adopted.
Since the powers of the new Dublin Parliament were thus

restricted Ireland, unlike the Colonies, must be given representa
tion at Westminster. The Bill provided for forty-two Irish mem-
1
Stephen Gwynn, John Redmond s Last Years, 1919.
2
Irish Finance. Report by the Committee on Irish Finance, 1912, p. 24.
3
Among the champions of Home Rule were a number of heretics who denied that in
1911 Ireland profited financially from her union with Great Britain (John J. Hogan,
Home
Ride. A Critical Consideration, 1911, pp. 54 sqq.), and others who, while admitting the
financial advantages of the union, maintained that Ireland should be prepared to sacrifice
them to secure financial independence. T. M. Kettle (Home Rule Finance. An Experiment
injustice) 1911 he even proposed that
: Ireland should make a contribution to the Empire,
p. 71. Erskine Childers, The

Framework of Home Rule. A Lecture delivered at a Public Meeting
Convened by the Young Ireland Branch of the United Irish League at the Mansion House, Dublin,
on March 2nd, 19i2, pp. 23-4. But the system proposed was too generous to be welcome
to the official Nationalist party. See Stephen Gwynn, The Case for Home Rule Stated by,
with a preface by John Redmond, 3rd Edition, 1917. Preface.
545
DOMESTIC ANARCHY
bers of the Imperial Parliament. But the difficulties which we have
just mentioned arose at once and the Bill made no provision for
dealing with them. Asquith, it is true, in the speech in which he
introduced the Bill promised a system of Home Rule All Round
but it would be postponed to a later date and it was unpopular
with the Moreover, the financial provisions of the Bill pre
Irish.
cisely because they were so generous

for an indefinite period
Ireland would live on alms from England placed severer restric
tions on Ireland than were placed on any Self-Go verning Colony:
she was expressly forbidden to impose a tariff. The Unionists had
therefore some reason to hope that Irish opinion would prove
refractory and compel Redmond and his followers to break their
alliance with the English Liberals. If they cherished any such
expectations they were speedily undeceived. The Bill, like its pre
decessors of 1886 and 1893, gave Ireland a separate legislature.
Moreover, names count for a good deal and Asquith conceded to
the new Irish legislature what Gladstone had obstinately refused
the of Parliament. When the Convention of the Nationalist
title
party in Dublin on April 24 it gave the Government Bill its

met
unqualified and enthusiastic support. The meeting had been
cleverly staged by Redmond and Devlin. The resolution was
seconded by the Lord Mayor of Cork, who had just been elected
to succeed an O
Brienite. A second resolution expressing the con
fidence of the assembly that the official party would introduce the
necessary amendments into the Bill was seconded by a Protestant
clergyman. And a Gladstone, a grandson of the great statesman,
came from England to greet amid enthusiastic applause the dawn
of the new era.
The debates in Parliament were prolonged until the end of the
year. Once, in November, a Unionist amendment to the financial
clauses of the Bill was adopted, and the Unionists exploited their
victory for all it was worth. But they were well aware that it was
a mere accident due to a poor attendance of the Liberal and
Labour members. It was followed
by an adjournment which gave
time for angry passions to calm down and the damage was re
1
paired a week later after violent debates.
A few alterations were made in the Bill by the Government
itself, of which one at least was important. After the expiration of
1
H. of C., November n, 12, 13, 1912 (Parliamentary Debates, Commons 1912; 5th
Series, vol. xliii, pp. 1765 sqq., 1841-1842, 1993 sqq.).
546
THE IRISH REVOLT
five years the Senate would not be nominated by the executive
but would consist of members elected in a fixed for
proportion
each of the four Irish provinces, a system of proportional repre
sentation being adopted to secure the representation throughout
the country of racial and religious minorities the Catholic
minority in the north, the Protestant in the south. The Bill finally
passed
its- third reading on January 16, 1913, by a majority of no
votes. Eleven days later theHouse of Lords threw it out without
debating its clauses by 326 to 96 votes.
If the debates had been lengthy they had not been passionate.
On the contrary, interest had flagged, and the attendance of the
often been scanty. Other and more pressing matters
public had
engaged the attention of Parliament and the nation. The iron
machinery of the closure peculiar to the British Parliament, dis
,
couraged all attempts at obstruction. Devised thirty years earlier

to overcome the obstruction of the Irish members it now enabled
the Irish Nationalists to crush the opposition of the English
Unionists. And the Parliament Bill, employed this year for the
time, deprived the debates of much of their interest. For only
first
urgent questions arouse strong passions. And the question at issue

was not whether Dublin would or would not have its Parliament
within a year. Nor would a decision be reached when the House
of Lords rejected the Government of Ireland Bill. There would
not even be an appeal to the electorate to decide the conflict be
tween the two Houses. The House of Commons which passed the
Bill of 1912 was sovereign but its sovereignty could not be made
effective for a long while to come. It was the first act of a drama
whose catastrophe lay two years ahead.
The session of 1913 did not begin until March, since the extra
ordinary session of 1912 had extended far into the following year.
During the session of 1912 two Bills had been passed by the Lower,
and thrown out by the Upper House the Irish Bill and the
Welsh Church Bill. A third, the Franchise Bill, had been provi
sionally dropped, hung up by the feminist difficulty before the
Commons had even debated its clauses. In its place a more modest
measure was introduced abolishing the plural vote. But this Bill
was a year behind the others and if the House of Lords rejected it
twice could not pass until 1915, provided no General Election
were held in the interval. The Cabinet quickly passed the other
Bills thrown out by the Lords through their second reading in
547
DOMESTIC ANARCHY
the Commons and asked Parliament to sanction a special proce
dure for the third reading. Normally, the third reading of a Bill
involved the individual discussion of its clauses. Such a discussion
however would serve no purpose, since to fulfil the provisions
of the Parliament Act the Bill must be returned to the Lords iden
tical in every detail with the measure sent up the year before. The
Cabinet therefore proposed that at the third as at the second

a
reading both Bills should be passed en bloc after cursory debate
which must not exceed, particularly in the case of the Irish Bill,
the limits of a single sitting. Asquith further pointed out that the
Parliament Bill did not prevent the House of Lords from amend
ing the Bill, or the Government from accepting its amendments.
Clause two of the Parliament Act allowed the Opposition, even
in the Commons, to suggest amendments which the Government
might pronounce acceptable and which, if accepted in turn by
the House of Lords might serve as the basis of a compromise. 1
But the Unionist Opposition, hostile to any compromise, refused
to put any suggestions forward and the Bill was passed en bloc
by the Commons, rejected en bloc by the Lords. The debates were

dreary, drearier even than in the previous year. This was the
effect of the system set up by the Parliament Act of 1911. The
second session of a Parliament had become a mere formality, an
indispensable interlude between the first in which a genuine dis
cussion took place, though the effects were too remote to make it
interesting to the public, and the third, when a decision of the
legislature akeady two years old, would be carried into effect and
the will of the Lords overridden.
This final stage had been reached when Parliament reassembled
for the new session in January 1914. The Cabinet after the Bill had
1
i & 2 Geo. 5, Cap. 13, Sec. 2(4): .. Provided that the House of Commons may, if
.
they think fit on the passage of such a Bill through the House in the second or third
Session, suggest any further amendment without inserting the amendment in the Bill, and
any such suggested amendments shall be considered by the House of Lords, and, if agreed
to by that House, shall be treated as amendments made by the House of Lords and agreed
*
to by the House of Commons. ... To complete our account of the applications of the
Parliament Act we may observe that it could also be employed in terror em, to induce the
House of Lords to accept a compromise without the need of recourse to the suggestions
for which the Bill made provision. This happened this very year 1913 in the case of a
Temperance (Scotland) Bill which during the previous session had been mutilated by the
amendments of the Upper House. The Government had announced its intention to drop
the Bill, reintroduce it in the original form and pass it in this form in 1914 under the provi
sions of the Parliament Act if the House of Lords persisted in its attitude. The Bill was then
passed a second time by the Commons but when it reached the Lords the latter restricted
their amendments to those accepted by the Government and the dispute was settled by
the compromise.
548
THE IRISH REVOLT
been passed for the third time by the Commons would possess the
legal authority
to disestablish the Welsh Church and give Ireland
a Parliament. But was its legal matched by a corresponding moral
and material authority? Brought suddenly face to face with facts
after two years of unreal debate, it was obvious that the Cabinet,
so far at least as Ireland was concerned, had no confidence in its
own strength.
was not that the Ministry need fear a revolt of British public
It
opinion on the question. No doubt the Liberal party lost a certain

number of seats. But in these cases the Unionist candidate owed
his return to a split vote between the Liberal and Labour candi
1
dates. The discontent which the National Insurance Act aroused
in the working classes when it came into operation for the first
time explains these Labour candidatures put forward to exclude
the Liberal candidate. And the feminists financed them to further
their cause. Labour headquarters gave a passive consent though
not without anxiety at the prospect of a breach with the Cabinet
which formed no part of its policy. The predominant feeling of
the general public was boredom. The Liberals, besides the impor
tant measures actually introduced, promised universal suffrage
and a reform of the law of real estate. They spoke also of an edu
cation Act and nationalization of the railways. But they aroused
no enthusiasm. The Unionists promised conscription, protection,
and the restoration of the rights of the House of Lords not a
popular programme. As regards the Irish question, opposition
to Home Rule was still the fundamental plank of a party which
5
for that very reason called itself Unionist But the Irish peril was
.
no longer, as in 1886 and in 1895, an alarm which aroused the

masses. Everyone was weary of a tedious problem, sickened by
the dreary prospect that it might prove insoluble, and ready to
welcome any solution a statesman might have the good fortune
to discover. If ill-humour bulked largely in the attitude of the
also a large measure
public towards political questions, there was
of indifference. There was a nonchalance encouraged by the
1
Midlothian, September 10, 1912; Newmarket, May 1913; Reading, November
i<5,
8, 1913; South-West Bethnal Green, February 19, 1914; Leith, February 26, 1914 (the
seat had been held uninterruptedly by a Liberal since 1832) ; North-East Derbyshire, May
20, 1914; Ipswich, May 23, 1914. Cf. Lloyd George speech at Criccicth June 2, 1914.
549
DOMESTIC ANARCHY
continuous economic prosperity and the rapid increase of wealth
in every branch of industry and commerce. And in consequence
there was much moral anarchy, a spate of luxury and pleasure
seeking.There was much social and political anarchy also. Labour

seethed with unrest; the suffragettes raised their shrill war cries,
and Ulster rebelled in advance against the Government of Ireland
Act.
For it was in Ireland
that the great, indeed well-nigh insur
mountable, obstacle arose to the execution of this Statute accepted
by the electorate of -Great Britain. A
quarter of its population-
one million in four was Protestant, and these million Protestants,
determined not to endure the yoke of the majority, were not
scattered uniformly over the island. In Munster and Connaught
they were an insignificant minority, and in Leinster one in four.

But in Ulster the situation was very different. In the west, in
Donegal and in the south, in the counties of Cavan and Mona-
ghan, the Catholics constituted five-sixths of the population;
nearer the centre in Fermanagh and Tyrone they were only a
little more than half and in the north in 1
Londonderry, and in the
south-east in Armagh the Protestants were in a majority and their
majority became overwhelming in the east, in Antrim, Down,

and the city of Belfast. The Ulster Protestants worked hard and
amassed wealth in their shipyards and linen factories. The firm of
Harland and Wolff was the greatest firm of shipbuilders in the
world. It had built the giant liners, the Olympic arid the Titanic.
It was the boast of the
population of Ulster, or rather of its indus
trial districts, that
they paid three-quarters of the Irish taxation.
Proud of the example their hard-working community afforded
to the rest of Ireland they were determined never to
amalgamate
with the race of babblers and merry-Andrews whose folhes and
vices the new school of Irish literature
delighted, it would seem,
to depict as though in defiance, a
spectacle for the respectable
Protestants of the north.
In September 1911, little more than a month after the House
of Lords finally passed the Parliament Bill, Ulster was the scene
of a vast popular demonstration which united Irish enthusiasm
and Protestant gravity. 300,000 Irish Unionists assembled to
express their thanks to Sir Edward Carson, an eminent barrister
1
Where however the city of Londonderry itself returned a Home Ruler in 1912, giving
the Home Rulers a majority of one vote in the representation of Ulster.
550
THE IRISH REVOLT
who had become the accredited leader of their
party and at
the same time to give him and his friends a commission to
draw up a constitution for a pro visional
government of Ulster,
to come into operation the very day a Home Rule Bill of
any description became law. From that moment demonstra
tions of revolt against the Irish Government which the English
Liberals proposed to set up in Dublin followed thick and fast. In
January 1912 30,000 men marched past Sir Edward. In April 1912
at Balmoral near Belfast 100,000 men marched past Bonar Law,
the official leader of the Unionists in the Commons, the son of a
Presbyterian minister, and an Ulsterman by birth who on his

return to England encouraged the Ulstermen by using, first at a
public meeting,
then in Parliament, the language of civil war. 1
Finally, a summer marked in Northern Ireland by perpetual
brawls between Protestants and Catholics was concluded on the
28th of September by a solemn ceremony at Belfast. After a
religious service the demonstrators formed a procession. It was
headed by Sir Edward Carson, the Cromwell of the new move
ment. After him was borne an old banner of yellow silk embroi
dered with a red star in the centre and Saint George s cross in one
corner, reverently preserved in an Ulster family and believed to
have been carried two centuries earlier in the battle of the Boyne.
Behind Sir Edward and his banner there followed an army of
prospective rebels against the application
of the Parliament Bill to
Ireland.Then came Lord Londonderry, Lord Charles Beresford,
and F. E. Smith, followed by a second army. The procession
debouched ,on a public square. At a table set up for the pur
pose the demonstrators, 2,000 in number,
were the first to sign
what was called in Biblical language, the Covenant, a pledge
taken in the presence of God to stand by each other in defending
for ourselves and our children, our cherished position of equal
citizenship in the United Kingdom,
and in using all means which
may be found necessary to defeat the setting up of a Home Ride
1
Speech at Blenheim, July 27, 1912: Ireland was two nations.
.The Ulster people
. .
would submit to no ascendancy, and he could imagine no length of resistance to which

of
they might go in which they would not be supported by the overwhelming majority
the British people. Also H. of C., July 31, 1912: In regard to what I said at Blenheim, I
very glad to have an opportunity of repeating it here. ... I said the same thing
am in
between
August a year ago. ... I recognize ... the difference and the great difference,
saying it when I was practically a private member
and saying it as a leader of the Unionist
party in this House. I have felt for months that
sooner or later it would be necessary for
me to say the same thing in the clearest and most explicit way/ (Parliamentary Debates,
Commons 1912; 5th Series, vol. xli, pp. 2132-2133.)
551
DOMESTIC ANARCHY
Parliament in Ireland and if they could not prevent
,
its establish
ment never to recognize its authority.
agitation redoubled in 1913 when it became clear that the
The
Government intended to carry out its programme and would not,
assome Unionists had maintained, evade the issue by dissolving
Parliament before the Commons had passed the Government of
Ireland Bill for the third time. In July, when the
dismal session of
1913 was drawing to its monster demonstration
close a of Carson s
followers at Craigavon in Ulster, in which 150,000 men took part,
inaugurated enlistments for the army of Ulster volunteers Be .
fore the end of the year 100,000 had enlisted. 1 On September 17

the Ulster volunteers were placed under the command of Lieuten
ant-General Sir George Lloyd Reilly Richardson and on the 2yth
all the
organs of a prospective provisional government were con
stituted. There was an executive committee of seventy-six mem
bers; a military council; an Ulster Volunteer Committee; a Legal
Committee; a Customs, Excise, and Post Office Committee. At
the same time a public subscription was opened to raise a sum of
.10,000,000 to provide pensions for the volunteers or their
their families if they were wounded or killed in the course of the
armed struggle so likely to occur in the near future. 2 But the
leaders seem, at any rate at this period, to have regarded the
collection of the fund as a diplomatic move rather than a genuine
insurance against casualties actually expected. They defied the
British Government to repress a movement which though in
form a rebellion was in fact a Loyalist movement since it was
dkected against those Irish Catholics who had always adopted
1 It was only at juncture that the British public learnt of the constitution of this
this
army of Ulstermen. But in a country where rebellion seemed everybody s natural voca
tion Ulster had long been preparing to arm. In his Annals of an Active Life (vol. i, pp.
172-3) General Macready mentions a manifesto of the Grand Orange Lodge of Ireland
dated December 7, 1910, which, while urging the voters to go to the polls at the next
election, calls upon the Irish loyalists to prepare to fight in the event of a Home Rule Bill
being passed and adds Already steps are being taken to enrol men to meet any emer
gency.
2
Sir Edward Carson
s speech at Belfast,
September 20, 1912: I only want to say "Good
Bye".
be longing for the time when I can come back, whether the occasion be for
I shall
peace I prefer it or to fight, and if it be to fight I shall not shrink. One thing I feel per
fectly confident of is that to-day we have taken a step which has put our enemies into such
a state of difficulty that they are wondering what on earth they are going to do/ And his
language at Belfast on November 4, 191.3, was even more explicit: He had never had
riots in his mind at all. All day he had cautioned their
people not to risk their lives or
liberties in fruitless action. What they meant was steady,
unflinching, determined and
continuous obstruction of the law so as to make government under Home Rule absolutely
impossible.
552
THE IRISH REVOLT
the attitude of rebels and whom the English had always regarded
in that light.
And in fact the Cabinet began to find its parliamentary triumphs

a source of embarrassment. What use should it make of the third
victory in 1914,
which nothing could prevent? Already, a year
before, when the Home Rule Bill was first passed, Lord Dunraven
and the small Irish party in favour of a policy of devolution had
intervened and a member of the Cabinet, Winston Churchill,
when sketching a scheme of federalism for Great Britain which
divided the country into as many as twelve separate regions had
be understood that he might be contemplating a similar divi
let it
sion of Ireland which would safeguard the autonomy of Protes

tant Ulster.
1
In 1913 during the long parliamentary recess which
extended until January attempts at conciliation became more
insistent.
Lord Loreburn, a former Lord Chancellor, addressed a letter to
The Times on September n in which to prevent a civil war in
Ireland he urged that there should be a Conference or direct
communication between the leaders On October 8 Churchill.
desire for what he called a settlement by consent or

expressed his
that if only the parties concerned
by agreement and pointed out
could be brought to agree, the text of the Parliament Act enabled
Tar reaching amendments to be made in the Government of
Ireland Bill. And Asquith himself on October 25 while rejecting
2
the suggestion of a formal conference proposed an interchange

of views ... for the adjustment of the position of the minority in
Ireland . 3 What was the he had in mind? Was it
adjustment
Home Rule for Ulster within Irish Home
Rule? Sir Edward
October 27 seemed to favour that
Grey speaking at Berwick on
solution. That Ulster should be to claim exclusion from
permitted
a Home Rule Ireland either immediately or when sufficient time
had elapsed to prove co-operation impossible? Sir Horace Plun-
kett suggested a plan of this kind. Or should Ulster, or more strictly
its Protestant portion, be excluded for
a fixed term of
speaking
1
Speech at Dundee, September 12, 1912.
2
Speech at Dundee, October 8, 191 3-
3
Address at Ladybank to the East Fife Liberal Association.
553
DOMESTIC ANARCHY
years, to be incorporated only at a later date when it would have

had time to become accustomed to the new conditions ? The Times
in November declared that this was in fact the plan favoured by
the Government. At this juncture conversations were held be
tween the leaders of the two great parties, Asquith and Bonar
Law. No result was reached. Two proclamations issued on
December 4 forbidding, the first the importation, the second
the transport along the coast, of arms and munitions, seemed in
tended to recall men s minds to a sense of realities. It was in vain
that the speech from the throne on February 10, 1914, after
admitting the failure of the conversations held the previous

November, insisted on the dangers which threatened the country
if theproblem were not handled a spirit of mutual concession
"in .
Very few traces of such a spirit were visible in Ireland. It was pro
posed to liberate a nation and there were two nations, one of which
refused liberation. In Ireland the passions of the herd, the more
embittered because they were religious as well as political, clashed
and the very suggestion of a compromise was absurd. Policy was
confronted with fanaticism, and parliamentary methods, official
and unofficial alike, were faced by the stark reality of an incipient
civil war.
Asquith, however, decided to put forward a compromise on

hisown initiative, since Bonar Law rejected the suggestion. On
March 9 he explained his views to the House. He did not propose
to employ, as he had thought of doing in 1913, the method of
suggestions for which Clause 2 of the Parliament Bill made pro

vision. But simultaneously with the introduction for the third
time of the Government of Ireland Bill, which must be passed
without amendment to satisfy the conditions of the Parliament
Act, he would introduce an Amending Bill which passed by both
Houses would modify the Home Rule Bill as though its provi
sions had been incorporated as amendments in the latter. The Bill
would enable each of the Ulster Counties to decide by a plebiscite
in favour of exclusion for six years from the operation of the
Government of Ireland Bill. At the end of the six years these
counties would automatically be incorporated into a self-govern
ing Ireland. This procedure would satisfy the Irish Nationalists

who would concede to their adversaries nothing more than six
years respite. But it would If, as was
also satisfy the Unionists.
generally expected, Parliament were dissolved in the autumn,

554
THE IRISH REVOLT
two General Elections would be held before the six years had
elapsed.
The Unionists therefore would have two opportunities
of appealing to the country, and if the country gave them a man
date to do so, of settling the Irish question on a different basis.
Possibly there were ministers who faced with a secret satisfaction
the prospect of defeat at the next Election. The Government of
Ireland Bill once passed they would be glad to see the Irish
Nationalists confronted with a Unionist Government. But for
thisvery reason perhaps the proposal did not attract the Unionist
leaders. Moreover, it was confronted by the uncompromising
attitude of the Ulster Protestants who were not prepared to aban
don the rest of Ireland to the Catholics, unless the latter accepted
the final, and not merely the temporary, exclusion of Protestant
Ulster. While using conciliary language they demanded further
concessions.
10
For a moment it seemed as though the Cabinet did not object

in principle to this solution. From the time when at the close of
1910 he had appearedto entertain the hope of an amicable settle
ment of the Irish question, Lloyd George had maintained a de
liberate silence. It was only at this juncture that he intervened
once more. It was he who secured the assent of Redmond and his
followers to the temporary exclusion of Protestant Ulster. He

now and T. P.
again approached Redmond, Devlin, Dillon,
O Connor and tried to obtain a further concession. They, how
ever, refused. They had gone as far as they could without destroy
ing their reputation as Irish patriots.
Then the Cabinet decided to
brave the oppositionof Ulster. On
March 14 Churchill spoke at
Bradford words which seemed irrevocable. There are worse
things than bloodshed
We
are not going to have the realm of
Britain sunk to the condition of the Republic of Mexico/ On
Monday, March Prime Minister in more Asquithian ter

16, the
further concessions would be
minology made it
plain that no
made. And the Secretary for War, Seely, who had succeeded Lord
Haldane when the latter was made Lord Chancellor in 1912,
worked out in collaboration with Churchill, the First Lord of the
than a plan. of campaign in
Admiralty, what was nothing less
555
DOMESTIC ANARCHY
Northern Ireland. The army would occupy all munition dumps
and arsenals, and all strategic positions in Protestant Ulster. A
small flotilla would be in readiness to transport by sea regiments
which the railways would refuse to carry. A formidable concen
tration of troops would presumably nip any attempt at rebellion
in the bud. If, however, Ulster replied to the military occupation
by an actual revolt, the leaders would be arrested and the insur

rection forcibly put down. It was indeed expected that certain
officers of Ulster origin would find it difficult to obey the orders
they would receive. Those officers therefore,

whose principles
would be outraged by the repression of the revolt and who could
not be relied upon to employ the necessary severity, were invited
to resign their commissions. 1 General Gough, who was in com
mand of the Third Cavalry Brigade at the camp in the Curragh
in Ireland, resigned and was immediately replaced. This hap
pened on Friday, the 20th. The following day, Lloyd George

than
speaking at Huddersfield used even stronger language
Churchill had employed. "We are confronted he declared, with ,
the gravest issue raised in this country since the days of the Stuarts.
at stake. ... I am here
Representative government in this land is
this afternoon on behalf of the British Government to say this to
y OU that they mean to confront this defiance of popular liberties

with a most resolute, unwavering determination, whatever the
hazard may be.
But General Gough was not the only officer at the Curragh who
resigned on March 20. With a few exceptions all
the officers of
both cavalry regiments resigned with him. Against the rebel
lion of Ulster the army could be used, but what could be done if
the army went on strike? Carson informed the King that the
Cabinet proposed to himself and the other Ulster leaders,
arrest
and that if this step were
all the customs houses in Ulster
taken,
would be seized in retaliation. 2 The .King urged caution on
Asquith, who gladly accepted his advice. The Prime Minister in
the Commons, the Lord Chancellor in the Lords, denied the in
tention attributed to the Government of undertaking a military
1 For the text of the instructions given on December 16, 1913, to the generals in com
mand of the forces in England, Scotland, and Ireland by the Secretary for "War, Seely, see
Major-General The Rt. Hon. J. E. B. Seely, Adiwntwe, pp. 160-1.
2
Lieutenant-Colonel A Court Repington, 7 he First World War, i9i4~191S, vol. i,
p. 69 he repeats Carson s account of the matter in a conversation with himself on Novem
:
ber 19, 1915.
556
THE IRISH REVOLT
campaign against Ulster. General Gough was summoned to

London, withdrew his resignation and returned to Ireland bearing
a written pledge signed by the Secretary for War that the army
would under no circumstances be called upon to repress by force
to Home Rule. When the
movement of resistance
a report of this
surrenderwas triumphantly proclaimed by the Unionist Press, the
Premier denied that the promise had been made or at least had
received the assent of the Cabinet. Then the Secretary for War
resigned. In reply, the Chief of Staff, Sir
resigned. John French,
The Secretary forWar withdrew his resignation, then resigned a
second time. What an example for the British proletariat Speak !
ing in the House of Commons J. H. Thomas declared that if the
negotiations then
in progress between the
railwaymen and the
companies failed and a strike broke out in November he would
bear in mind the lesson taught by the events in Ulster and advise
the men to arm. 1 Under these circumstances Asquith with a cour
age universally applauded, yielded to his colleagues entreaties
and took over the functions of Secretary for War. As expert
Parliamentarian, taking Seely s place, he made a desperate attempt
to preserve the semblance of discipline in the army, while as
Prime Minister he did his utmost to preserve the semblance of
2
legal government in the State.
Ulster had won the first round. A month later it gained a further
and even more striking victory. When in December
a royal pro
clamation forbade the importation of arms into Ireland, the
Ulstermen had replied that it came too late since they akeady pos
sessed all the arms they needed. They had proceeded to argue in
the courts, not always unsuccessfully, that the proclamation was
illegal,
since the Liberal Cabinet had repealed the Crimes Act.
At the end of April they proved that it was in any case ineffective.
In the course of a single night to the mystification of the police
and customs officials 40,000 rifles and 1,000,000 cartridges were
landed at three separate points on the west coast and immediately
distributed throughout Ulster. Where did this mysterious vessel,
which under a false name brought the arms and munitions, come
1
H. of C, March 23, 1914 (Parliamentary Debates, Commons, 1914, 5th Series, vol. Ix,
pp. So-i) also H. of L., same date, (ibid., Lords 1914, 5th Series, voL xv, p. 639.)
2
For the Curragh episode see Major-General The Rt. Hon. J. E. B. Seely, Adventure,
pp. 166 sqq. General Macready, Annals of an Active Life, vol. i, pp. 176 sqq. Major-General
Sir C. E. Callwell, Field-Marshal Sir Henry Wilson, vol. i, pp. 139 sqq. Field-Marshal Sir
William Robertson, From Private to Field-Marshal, 1921, pp. 193-5. J- A. Spender and C.
Asquith, Life of Lord Oxford and Asquith, vol. ii, pp. 44-6.
557
DOMESTIC ANARCHY
from? It came from Hamburg and the rifles were Mausers. 1 Far
from being ashamed of this German aid these rebels, self-styled
loyalists, blazoned the fact with a lack of restraint which shows
how intensely Irish their temper was. They were delighted when
a prominent German diplomat, Secretary to the German
Embassy
in London, Baron von Kiihlmann, made a lengthy visit to Ulster 2
and a host of German journalists flocked to the scene to keep
their public in touch with the incipient revolution. If England
betrayed them, why should not William II prove another William

of Orange, come like the former from the Continent to deliver
them from the Catholic yoke ? 3
ii
To this further manifestation of anarchy the Government re
plied at first
by adopting a still more conciliatory attitude. Lloyd
George had disappeared from the scene. He was absorbed in
House of Commons an ambitious and com
piloting through the
plicated Budget which imposed extremely heavy taxation and
1
There was reason to think that the German Government had stopped the traffic in the
Kiel Canal in order to let the Fanny; the steamer which carried them, get round Denmark
into the North Sea and so escape the vigilance of the British Navy* (Richard Burdfm
Haldane, An Autobiography, p. 269).
2
Captain Sheeham, Ireland since Parnell, pp. 273-4.
3
James Chambers, M.P., speech at South Belfast, May 23, 1913 As regards the future,
:
what if the day should come when Ireland would be clamouring for independence com
plete and thorough from Great Britain? What side would they take then? (A voice
. . .
"Germany".) He bound no man They owed to England allegiance,

to his opinions.
loyalty, gratitude; but if England cast them off, then he reserved the right, as a betrayed
man, to say shall act as I have a right to act. I shall sing no longer God save the King"
"I
. . . He said there
solemnly that the day England cast him off and despised his loyalty and
allegiance, that day he would say: England, I will laugh at your calamity, I will mock
when your fear cometh* (The Complete Grammar of Anarchy. By Members of the War
Cabinet and their Friends compiled by J. J. Hogan, 1919, p. 37). An utterance by Captain
Craig, M.P. Germany and the German Emperor would be preferred to the rule ofJohn
:
Redmond, Patrick Ford, and the Molly Maguires (L. G. Redmond Howard, Sir Roger
Casement. A
Character Sketch without Prejudice, 1916, p. 30). Major F. Crawford speech at
Bangor, April 29, 1912: *If they were put out of the Union ... he would infinitely prefer
to change his allegiance right over to the Emperor of Germany or anyone else who had
got a proper and stable government.* (D. Gwynn, Life and Death of Sir Casement, Roger
p. 181.) It was more serious to find Bonar Law in open Parliament bestowing on this wild
talk the semi-official sanction of the Unionist party: *It is a fact which I do not think
any
one who knows anything about Ireland will deny, that these people in the North and
East of Ireland, from old prejudices perhaps more than from anything else, from the whole
of their past history, would prefer, I believe, to accept the government of a foreign country
rather than submit to be governed by hon. gentlemen below the
gangway* (H. of C.,
January i, 1913; Parliamentary Debates, Commons 1912; 5th Series, vol. bcvi, p. 464).
558
THE IRISH REVOLT
was the object of violent attacks. 1 But Churchill spoke in Parlia
ment the language of peace with which Asquith associated him
self. And on the other side of the House, Bonar Law and Sir
Edward Carson himself made proof of considerable moderation.

Unfortunately, the leaders on both sides always found themselves
faced with the uncompromising obstinacy of the two factions, or
rather, the two nations in Ireland. When on June 23 Lord Crewe
introduced in the Lords the Amending Bill
promised by Asquith
at the beginning of March it was found to contain
nothing more
than the Prime Minister had indicated in his original sketch and
which the Ulstermen and their allies had from the beginning re
fused to accept. Lord Crewe was content to mention incidentally
that the Government were ready to consider certain amendments.
The House of Lords replied by introducing into the Bill a series
of amendments which changed its nature completely. Not only
did they exclude Ulster without a plebiscite, en bloc, not county
by county, finally, and not merely for six years but they modified
the arrangements made by the Cabinet for the government of
Catholic Ireland. The supporters of the Government in the Lords
accepted this declaration of war passively and in silence. It was
always the same impasse. If a Bill satisfied the Irish Catholics, the
Irish Protestants would it. If a Bill was
rebel against acceptable to
Protestant Ulster and her English supporters, the Cabinet could
not accept it without betraying its Irish clients. In despair, Asquith
turned to the King.
The firebrands of the Unionist party had persistently pressed
the King to intervene. They urged him to refuse his assent to the
Bill when Asquith submitted it for his signature^ or to dismiss
immediately the Liberal ministers, form a Unionist Cabinet, and

appeal to the country. What did the King himself think? On the
2
question of Ireland his personal opinions were those of the Unionist
1 This not the place to discuss the details of a Budget which Lloyd George carried
is
only in part. We
need only say that it exceeded the sum of 200,000,000, and presented a
deficit and moreover that to provide for the increasing deficit of local government finance
Lloyd George proposed to increase the contributions from the national exchequer to
the local authorities in the spirit of that system of taxation of land values of which he
never lost sight and that to make up the national deficit he proposed besides a considerable
decrease in the sinking fund and an all-round increase of the taxes levied on large fortunes.
Finally, the Speaker intervened to protest against the inclusion in a Money Bill of clauses
not of a strictly financial character. For the difficulties in which Lloyd George was in
consequence involved see Book I, p. 349.
*
For these demands see Sir John Mariott s reflections, The Mechanism of the Modern
State a Treatise on the Science and Aft of Government, 1927, vol. i, p. 33.
VOL vi 20 559
DOMESTIC ANARCHY
party. Nor did he consider himself obliged to give his assent to

the Government of Ireland Bill if it were not accompanied by
the Amending Bill which the Liberal Prime Minister had himself
admitted to be necessary. But we can well believe that he shrank
1
from taking so dangerous an initiative and forcing an appeal to

the electorate after which it would be no longer as had been the
case four years earlier the veto of the House of Lords, but the
2
veto of the Crown itself which would be called in question. It
was because he was afraid to commit himself that during the last
few months he had, though reluctantly,

3
come forward as a
mediator. It was he who had approached Asquith and Bonar Law

in November. It was he who in March acted as an intermediary
between Carson and Asquith. Why should he not intervene again
at the eleventh hour and attempt to secure, in accordance with
the procedure which had suggested itself to Balfour and Lloyd
had recommended
George in 1910, and which Lord Loreburn
in 1913, the appointment of an impartial conference? When
the Amending Bill reached the report stage that is to say, when
the measure as a whole must be put to the vote, an adroit use
of the rules of procedure enabled Lord Dunraven to introduce
and carry an amendment empowering the King to suspend by
order in council the operation of the Home Rule Bill until a Royal
Commission had reported on the constitutional relations between
4
Ireland and the other parts of the United Kingdom. Lord Morley
opposed the amendment which he denounced

as unconstitutional
and it was carried in opposition to the Government. Nevertheless,

Lord Dunraven was simply expressing, possibly in an unaccept
able form, a desire to gain time, which the Government shared
and which a few days later it would satisfy by another method.
On Monday, July 20, after a week of feverish negotiations the
1 Sir Almeric
fitzroy, Memoirs, June 16, 1914. Lord Morley s account of an
audience
with King George (vol. ii, p. 552).
2
Christopher Addison, Politicsfrom Within, 1911-191S, vol. i, pp. 34-6.
8
Mensdorff Dispatch from London, October 10, 1913 King George is so preoccupied
:
with the present difficulties of the domestic situation that is to say, with Ireland and the
responsibility laid upon the crown by both parties that he
seems at the moment to give
less attention to questions of foreign policy. His Majesty repeatedly complained to me of
the extremely delicate position in which he was placed and the decisions he was called
upon to take. No English sovereign, he said, had been confronted with such difficult prob
lems. Fortunately he seems determined to maintain a strictly constitutional attitude and to
resist the constant invitations made to him by members of the Opposition to intervene
personally in the conflict* (Osterreich-Ungarns Aussenpolitik . . . vol. vii, p. 430).

4 H. of
L., July ii, 1914 (Parliamentary Debates, Lords 1914, 5th Series, vol. xvi, pp.
1135 sqq.).
560
THE IRISH REVOLT
King summoned a conference of which the Speaker was chair

man. It consisted of eight members: two Liberals, Asquith and
Lloyd George; two Unionists, Lord Lansdowne and Bonar Law;
two Irish Nationalists, Redmond and Dillon; and two Ulstermen,
Carson and Captain Craig. The Labour party and the Liberal
Press loudly denounced the Prime Minister s weakness and pro
tested against a procedure which might be interpreted as an en
croachment by the Crown upon the prerogatives of Parliament.
Arthur Ponsonby raised the question in the House of Commons. 1
2
Republicanism , declared Ramsay MacDonald, is at a discount
in this country, but, if the advice of responsible ministers or
by
irresponsible court hangers-on the King is going to do something
against the House of Commons liberty, then the flames of Re
publican agitation will be lit at once/ But this doctrinaire
opposi
tion was indubitably artificial. It was obvious that the King in
concert with his ministers was making a supreme effort not to
assert his authority but to
escape the necessity of using it, not to
destroy the British system of parliamentary government but to
save its imperilled tradition. The effort proved fruitless. The Con
ference held four meetings and the fourth, on
Friday the 24th,
ended in an impasse. The question of the treatment to be given to
the two southern counties of Ireland,
Fermanagh, and Tyrone
where the Catholics were in a majority and the slight Protestant
minority and the slight Catholic majority were so intermingled
that it was impossible to
separate them, was the point which the
each determined not to compromise with its
rival fanaticisms,
opponent, chose on which to declare agreement impossible.

3
What then was the goal for which Ireland and England were
heading?
4
Two days later another incident of civil warfare took
place in Ireland more serious than any which had occurred in the
previous spring.
1
H. of C., July 22, 1914 (Parliamentary Delates, Commons 1914, 5th Series, vol. Ixv,
p. 454)-
2
Durham Miners Annual Gala, July 25, 1914.
3
For interesting details of the discussion on this question see Lord Ullswater, A Speaker s
Commentaries, vol. i, pp. 163-4.
4 General Macready, Annals of an Active Life, vol. i, pp. 193-4: On the 2ist of July,
1914, the abortive conference took place at Buckingham Palace, and on the 24th of July
I received a note from Mr.
Asquith directing me to proceed to Belfast at once. There was
to be no change from the former policy, troops were to sit tight* and make no moves of
any kind. If a Provisional Government was proclaimed the consequential proclamation
by Carson would be awaited to enable the Cabinet to determine their next move. more A
thoroughly unsatisfactory position for any soldier it is hard to imagine, but the open sup
port of the Conservatives by certain senior officers on the active list of the Army made it
561
DOMESTIC ANARCHY
12
The scene of the incident to which we allude was not Protestant

but Catholic Ireland, the neighbourhood not of Belfast but of
Dublin and to understand the events which led up to it we must
go back a little. In telling the story of these last months of crisis
we have said very little of the part played by Redmond, for the
reason that it had been very subordinate. He had accepted the
Government s Bill without reservation and obtained for it the
support of his entire party. That support had ensured the passage
of the Bill in three successive sessions. Redmond thus found him
self as against the Ulster malcontents the representative of British
constitutionalism and since thirty years of Parliamentary life had
perhaps destroyed in him the revolutionary, temper, he was

delighted that under his leadership Catholic Ireland seemed to
represent the forces of order against the forces of disorder. His
position became more difficult when the Cabinet
on the point of
reintroducing the Government of Ireland Bill for the third time
began to hesitate in face of the resistance of Ulster and to speak of
compromise. In the teeth of many uncompromising utterances

he capitulated for the first time in March when he accepted the
Amending Bill as sketched by Asquith. He capitulated a second
time in July when together with Dillon he consented to take part
in a conference whose purpose could only be to explore the pos
sibility
of further concessions. But how difficult his position in
Ireland had become It is indeed surprising that he succeeded so
!
long in maintaining his authority almost unimpaired. For at his

back and without his recognition Catholic Ireland was following
a year later the example set by Ulster and was arming.
The movement seems to have originated among Larkin s fol
lowers during the great strike in Dublin in the autumn of 1913.
This host of workers mobilized for the strike provided the
material of a genuine revolutionary army on the Ulster model,
at once national and socialist, which would attempt to set up by
imperative in my view to see the business through no matter where it might lead. To
what extent the difficulties with which the Government was confronted were increased
by the fear of alienating American opinion it is hard to decide in the entire absence of any
reference to the subject either in the Press or in Parliament. It is however certain that the
question must have caused the Cabinet considerable anxiety when it became clear that
war with Germany was iiriminent. See Royal Commission on the Rebellion in Ireland 1916,
Minutes ofEvidence, p. 21 : Evidence by the Rt. Hon. Augustine Birrell.
562
THE IRISH REVOLT
force an Irish proletarian republic.
1
Citizen A
Army was actually
organized under the patronage of an
English crank, Captain
White, son of one of the leading British generals who after follow
ing for some years
his father s profession had conceived an anti
to war and the army and had dabbled one after another in
pathy
allthe Utopias, Tolstoyan, Vegetarian, and Communist before
hisconversion to the cause of the Irish revolution. On October 25
we find him on the platform of a large public meeting held in
Dublin where a more ambitious project was discussednothing
less than the formation of a huge army of volunteers which, irre
of social, political, and religious creed, would
spective prepare to
defend the independence of Ireland. Representatives of Irish
republicanism and Sinn Fein took part in the meeting, and the
Hibernians and the United Irish League were also represented
2
though their representation was smaller. Sir Roger Casement
was also present. A Protestant born in Ulster but of English
3
parentage,
he had for some time been in the consular service and
had taken part in Africa in Morel s campaign against the com
the Belgian Congo. From Africa he had
panies exploiting pro
ceeded to South America, where his denunciation of the inhuman
treatment of native labour by the planters in certain districts of
Brazil had attracted the attention of the British public and earned
him a Knighthood. He had finally quitted the consular service
under circumstances about which his enemies circulated damaging
a champion of Irish
reports and had become independence. In a
series of articles which he wrote or inspired for publication in the
Irish Review he advocated an alliance between Ireland and Ger
many in the event of the imminent and inevitable war between
England and the latter country. A German victory, he maintained,

1
*We see to-day two main kinds of collective revolt, that of subject races and subject
classes. They may be (indeed generally are) quite distinct.^ A
class may revolt against the
the race of which it forms part has evolved that
pressure of a social system, although
system as part of its character and culture. Or
a race may revolt without
formulating any
distinct class protest. The race revolt is- an affair of the surface consciousness, concerned
with the modification or reconstruction of external conditions. Where the two revolts
unite in one the whole National Being is engaged, (Captain "White, The Significance of
Sinn Fein, 1918.) Quoted by the writer himself on page 246 of a work entitled Misfit in
which he tells the story of his inconsistent and incongruous career. See further for the
history of the Citi: *n Army P. O. Catharaigh,
The Story of the Irish Citizen Army, 1919.
*
W. A. Phillips, The Revolution in Ireland, 1923, pp. 68-9. D. D. Sheeham, Ireland since
Parnell, 1921, p. 279.
8
L. G. Redmond Howard, Sir Roger Casement. A Character Sketch without Prejudice, 1916.
Denis R. Gwynn, The Life and Death of Roger Casement, 1930. Casement s writings were
collected and published at Munich in 1917 under the title Gesammelte Schriften.
563
DOMESTIC ANARCHY
would mean for Ireland complete independence or at the least
1
independence under a German protectorate.
The organization of the Irish Volunteers inspired by^Casement
made rapid progress. By December their numbers were 1,850.
At the beginning of the following June there were more than
100,000 volunteers with 630 training centres. The movement was
governed from Dublin and was under the despotic control of a
Committee of twenty-five in which the representatives of the
parliamentary party were an insignificant minority. It was an
organization likely to have proved dangerous to the Nationalists
if it remained in the hands of extremists anxious to destroy the
authority of Redmond and his followers. In fact, it achieved such

rapid progress during the summer of 1914 because in May Red
mond ordered his party to join en masse, and on June 12 in an open
letter Redmond called upon the twenty-five members of the
Committee to co-opt twenty-five others, nominees of the party.
In case of refusal he demanded the immediate formation in every
county of committees to reorganize the volunteers on a new basis
independently of the Dublin Committee. Of the twenty-five
members of the Committee eight refused to yield. But the re
maining seventeen accepted Redmond s conditions. It was in vain
that the Republicans and Sinn Feiners who were
beginning to
join the movement and the Socialists of the little Citizen Army
which had not amalgamated with the main body of volunteers,
denounced the servility of the Dublin Committee. Redmond was
taking control of a movement which had been organized without
him and undoubtedly, in the intention of many of its founders,
2
against him.
1
^
Batha Macrainn Ireland and the German Menace* (Irish Review, September 1912, vol.
ii,pp. 343 sqq.). Shan Van Vocht Ireland, Germany and the next War (Irish Review,
July 1913, vol. iii, pp. 217 sqq.). Denis R. Gwynn (The Life and Death of Roger Casement,
p. 194) ascribes the latter article to Casement. In the first number of The Irish Volunteer,
April 7, 1914, Casement published an article entitled From Clontarf to Berlin* in which
he advocated: i. A
review of the National Volunteers to be held on April 23 the ninth
centenary of the great national victory of Clontarf; 2. The participation of Ireland as a
separate nation in the Olympic Games to be held at Berlin in 1916. Ireland should there
be ranked among the free countries of the world. She will be at least as free as Finland or
Alsace. When the ships of the Cunard Line ceased to call at
Queenstown, the German
Hamburg-Amerika Line decided to take its place. But the Irish prepared to welcome the
arrival of the first liner with celebrations on so ambitious a scale that the
Foreign Office
took alarm and at its request the German Government asked the
Hamburg-Amerika Line
to abandon its intention.
2
S. Gwynn, John Redmond s Last Years, 1919, p. 116. Cf. on the Irish Volunteers, Royal
Commission on the Rebellion in Ireland, 1916, Minuies ofEvidence, p. 45, Colonel Sir Neville
Chamberlain s Evidence.
564
THE IRISH REVOLT
But the malcontents were to have their revenge. At first the

Irish volunteers confined themselves to manoeuvres and unarmed
or if they carried any arms they were wooden rifles. In
parades,
decided to imitate Ulster and obtain arms from the
July they
where the Ulstermen had obtained theirs, in Germany.
quarters
A council of war was held in London at the house of Mrs.
J.
R.
Green, the widow of an eminent English historian and an ardent
Home Ruler. The meeting was attended by a young Englishman,
Erskine Childers, a member of the spiritual family to which
White and Casement belonged. A zealous patriot, he had fought
in the Boer War and published the diary recording his life in the
army. He had achieved success with a story about spying which
called the attention of the British public to the danger of a Ger
man invasion, and had published studies of military tactics in
which he discussed the lessons taught by the South African War
as to the employment of cavalry. During the summer of 1910,
spent
with an Irish uncle, he was suddenly converted to Home
Rule in virtue of his British patriotism, he declared, and because
he was an imperialist. Ireland must be treated as Canada had been
treated in 1840 and South Africa a few years before and reconciled
by complete liberation. His new creed led him to extreme courses.

He collected and provided from his private means a portion of
the funds necessary to purchase 25,000German rifles. He com
manded the yacht which took delivery of them in the neighbour
hood of Hamburg and on July 26, 1914, two days after the failure
of the conference, cast anchor with his cargo in the little
port of
Howth at the entrance to the harbour which led up to the capital. 1
The Dublin volunteers were on the spot, prepared for
a bold
demonstration. They would unload
the arms in broad daylight
at the very gates of the city beneath the eyes of the powerless
authorities. They occupied the pier, drove away the police and
customs officers, kept whatever guns they required, piled the rest
into motor lorries which disappeared from the scene, and set out
on their return to Dublin, where they intended to make a martial
and triumphant entry. They were met en route by a Scottish
if it could not
regiment which had been called out and which
seize their arms, at least put them to flight. But when the Scotch
1
For Erskine Childers see Erskine Childers, 1870-1922. A Sketch (by Basil Williams).
For the Howth incident see Denis Gwynn. The Life and Death of Roger Casement, 1930,
pp. 233 sqq. Conor O Brien, From Three Yachts. A Cruiser s Outlook, pp. I sqq.
565
DOMESTIC ANARCHY
troops returned to Dublin they were greeted by the booing and
missiles of an immense crowd. Alarmed and overwrought they
fired. There were fifty casualties, among them three deaths. 1
A loud cry of wrath arose throughout Catholic Ireland. This
was the way in which the BritishGovernment, so long-suffering
towards the Ulster rebels, met with shooting the first attempt
of the genuine Irish to reply to the Ulster threat. But we cannot
help asking whether the revolutionaries when they united their
protests with the popular outcry were wholly sincere. For this
bloody affray was a strategical success for themselves. Redmond
was in a tight corner. He must either be the accomplice of a
government of murderers or become in spite of himself the leader

of an insurrection. The problem would in fact assume this form
ere long, but meanwhile at the very moment when civil war
seemed to have broken out in Ireland, Irish affairs became no more
than an almost negligible episode in the tremendous struggle
which was beginning and would array in mortal combat the
nations and races of the globe.
1
Report of the Royal Commission into the Circumstances connected with the Landing of Arms
at Howth on 26th July, 1914 and Minutes of Evidence with Appendices and Index, 1914.
566
CHAPTER n
International Anarchy
I THE WEST AND THE PROBLEM OF ARMED PEACE
T IT TE have already seen the produced in the West by

effect
\l \l the conclusion on November 4,1911, of the agreement
T between France and
Germany on the question of
*
Morocco. It was not the reconciliation it might have been expec

ted to produce. France did not forgive Germany the methods of
intimidation she had employed in July and August. Germany
could not forgive France for having snatched from her, six years
after Tangier, the right to set
up a protectorate in Morocco. Nor
could she forgive England whose intervention in the dispute had
rendered France less pliable than she had hoped. And in England
we have observed loud expressions of dissatisfaction from a public
eager for peace, a dissatisfaction which turned againstGrey when
it became known how close to the abyss the nation had stood.
His position indeed was not seriously shaken. He had certainly
not lost the confidence of the King, who in February bestowed
upon him the signal honour of a Knighthood of the Garter,
which had been conferred upon only four members of the House
of Commons before him. But the triumvirs of Liberal Imperialism,
Asquith, Haldane, and himself, perceived that the only way to
satisfy public opinion was to do everything in their power to
appease the anger of Germany without endangering either the
ententewith France or British naval supremacy.
Thek task was made easier by the fact that certain members of
the German Government entertained similar sentiments. For a
long time the Chancellor, Bethmann-Hollweg, impressed by the
persistence with which Metternich, the German Ambassador in
London, urged a policy of caution on his Government, had been
working for a rapprochement between the two countries. As we
akeady know, negotiations had been opened, and had continued
until they had been broken off unexpectedly by the despatch of
the Panther to the harbour of Agadir. At the close of 1911 Beth
mann-Hollweg had the support of the Minister of Finance, who
shrank from lie ruinous expenditure which the new naval law
INTERNATIONAL ANARCHY
demanded by the Emperor and Tirpitz involved. And his oppo
sition was increased by the fact that the general staff was beginning
to demand a reinforcement of the army and to protest against the
excessive expenditure upon the navy which interfered with their
plans. The Emperor finally yielded to his Chancellor arguments

s
and gave him leave to commence negotiations for a pact with

England. He did not believe they would be successful. To attempt
to reconcile the Anglo-French entente with an understanding be
tween England and Germany was, he said, to attempt to square
the But the attempt would cost nothing. And its faolure
circle.
1
would expose British bad faith.

Bethmann-Hollweg lost no time in sending Metternich instruc
tions to begin the negotiations. But the Ambassador disagreed
with the procedure the Chancellor proposed. To attempt a formal
pact, a species of alliance or semi-alliance, was to invite failure. It
would be better to negotiate a colonial agreement on the lines of
those already concluded, with France first, then with Russia, and
which Grey s speech on November 27 seemed to envisage. 2 The
Chancellor left him free to negotiate in his own way and Metter
nich broached the subject on December 20. Grey, however,
showed no anxiety to follow up the suggestion. He was taken by
surprise. He could not decide upon his course of action until the
Reichstag election in January had determined the lines which
German policy would pursue in the immediate future. Moreover,
all the ministers were absent on their Christmas holiday and
would not return until the beginning of February. Nevertheless,

the negotiations continued. Like the negotiations between France
and Germany in 1905 and in 1911, they were conducted by busi
ness men who constituted themselves unofficial diplomats. 3
1
Note appended to a despatch from Metternich to Bethmann-Hollweg, December 20,
1911. (Die Grosse Politik . . . vol. xxxi, p. 86 n.)
2
Parliamentary Debates, Commons 1911, 5th Series, vol. xxxii, pp. 61-2. Grey ob
viously was making a veiled allusion to the Portuguese colonies and it was in this sense
that Metternich interpreted his words in a letter written on November 28 to Bethmann-
Hollweg (Die Grosse Politik . vol. xxix, p. 274).
. .
8
See Sir Goschen to Sir A. Nicolson, February 9, 1912: *. . the Chancellor
. said
. . .
that he had just received a despatch from Metternich and that there was evidently some
misunderstanding. The idea seemed to prevail in London that Ballin had acted under
instructions from the Emperor. This was far from being the case, as neither the Emperor
nor he himself had anything to do with Basin s first step In fact, he had been most sur
!
prised that Cassel had been chosen by His Majesty s Government as our intermediary in an
important matter which concerned the two Governments, and when there was a German
Ambassador in London. I said that I had certainly understood that Ballin had acted with
some authority, but the Chancellor denied it absolutely. (British Documents . . vol. vi,
.
p. 672.) The Same to the Same, February 10, 1912: "The Chancellor s remarks to me about
568
THE WEST AND ARMED PEACE
They were Albert Ballin, the great shipbuilder, and Sir Ernest
Cassel, the great banker, each a persona grata with the courts of
Potsdam and Windsor respectively. Ballin sent Cassel to Church
ill, who no
doubt consulted Asquith, when the latter on January
8 spent a few hours
in London. Ballin and Cassel favoured a
personal meeting between the two naval ministers, Churchill and

Tirpitz. Churchill refused. Such a meeting would commit the
British Government too far, as the impression would be given
that he had been sent to Berlin to apologize for Lloyd George s
outburst. The utmost to which he would agree was to accompany
King George to Berlin if the King should ever pay a visit to his
1
cousin. Nevertheless, he welcomed the suggestion of a conversa
tion to discuss the possibility of a mutual limitation of armaments.
Lloyd George, who was preparing his Budget for the financial
year 1912-13, was asking for economies, and McKenna in one
of the last speeches he delivered as First Lord of the Admiralty
had promised that the navy estimates for 1912 would not exceed
2
those for 1911, if Germany did not increase her navy. not Why
ask the German Government what its intentions were and under
armament race, if Germany did not speed
take to call a halt in the
it
up ? He obtained Lloyd George s consent when he returned on
January 21 from the Riviera and the decision was taken by a small
committee at the end ofJanuary before any meeting of the Cabinet
Ballin and Cassel were queer and there must be some well call it misunderstanding
somewhere. Haldane says that the Chancellor was only trying to save Metternich s face,
and that it was hardly necessary for him to allude to it. But then, how about my face if
the Germans are allowed to give the impression that His Majesty s Government opened
the conversations through Cassel and not through His Majesty s Ambassador at Berlin?
(ibid., p. 674) Szogyeny. Despatch from Berlin, February 15, 1912:
The papers comment
at length on the fact that Sir Ernest Cassel visited Berlin at the same time as Lord Haldane.
Herr von Kiderlen told me that on that occasion he had not met Cassel whom he regards
as a busybody. (Osterreich-Ungarns Aussettpolitik .. vol. iii,
.
p. 83.) Kiderlen-Wachter
was taking a holiday at Stuttgart when Haldane visited Berlin and was extremely annoyed
because he was not consulted (F. Jaeckh, Kiderlen-Wachter, Staatsmann tind Mensch.
Briefwechsel und Nachlass herausg. Von F. Jaeckh 1924,
vol. ii, p. 155). Huldennan s Life of
Albert Ballin does not decide the question. The writer is content to say: It was Cassel and
Ballin who suggested that another attempt should be made to reach an understanding and
the suggestion found a ready welcome from Herr von Bethmann (p. 248). It would
to these two
appear that the idea of these conversations suggested itself spontaneously ^
in what spirit we
magnates but that the offer of their services was immediately accepted,
have attempted to conjecture, by both Governments and also, but with considerable
reluctance, the
by Offices. Cf. W. Churchill, The World Crisis, 1911-
respective Foreign
1914, p. 95. Die Grosse Politik vol. xxxi, p. 97 n.
. . .
1 Winston Churchill to Sir E.

Cassel, January 7, 1912 (British Documents . . . vol. vi,
p. 666).
2 H. of C., March 13, 1911 (Parliamentary Debates, Commons 1911, 5th Series, vol. xxii,
p. 1921).
569
was held. Churchill probably agreed to the negotiations in the
same spirit as the Emperor William. He thought it advisable that
they should be opened. He was sure they would fail.
The conversations began on January 29 by the presentation at
Berlin of two diplomatic notes. Sir Edward Goschen handed one
to Kiderlen-Wachter, Sir Ernest Cassel the other to Bethmann-
Hollweg. The former was a long-delayed reply to the German
note of June 27 respecting an interchange of naval information.
The British Government gave an extremely guarded assent to the
principle. Although it was the German Government which at
the beginning of November had suggested further negotiations
on the subject, the note met with an. unfavourable reception in
Berlin. It was regarded as an attempt to discover the secret of the
German naval law to be introduced shortly. 1 The second was an
extremely brief memorandum consisting of three clauses and
approved by Grey, Churchill, and Lloyd George. It proposed as
the subject of the negotiations a diplomatic agreement, a colonial
agreement, and a reduction in the German programme of naval
construction. 2 Those were the three points on which during the
last two months
the Emperor, Metternich, and Churchill had
successively desired to negotiate. They were also the three ques
tions unsuccessfully discussed by both Governments for two
years,
from the summer of 1909 to the summer of 1911. Agadir had not
altered the policy of the British Government. The only difference
was that the country seemed more anxious than before to reach
an understanding. Would this greater anxiety make negotiations
any easier than they had been before Agadir?
The German Emperor gave the note a favourable reply, but
attached to his acceptance certain reservations of
principle and
invited Grey to discuss matters with him at Berlin. Before it had
been Churchill, now it was Grey. German tactics were always
the same. Germany wished to commit the British Government
further than it was
prepared to be committed. When, on February
2, the first meeting of the Cabinet was held the ministers decided
in favour of a more cautious policy. The Minister for War, Lord
Haldane he had been made a peer a few months before would
visit Berlin, accompanied by his brother, a distinguished scientist
1
Die Grosse Politik, Parliamentary Debates, Commons, 1911, 5th Series, vol. xxxi, p. 50
British Documents vol. vi, p. 662.
2
Ibid., voh xxxi, p. 98.
570
and fallow of an Oxford college, ostensibly to study questions
connected with the organization of higher education. Haldane
knew German to his finger-tips, was a frequent visitor to the
country, and had the entree of the German Embassy in London.
He could not fail to have the confidence of every English friend
of Germany and every German friend of England. Moreover, he
was an intimate friend of Asquith s and a still more intimate friend
of Grey s. Both knew all he had done to secure a close co-opera
tion between the British and French armies, if a German army
should invade France. In short, the imperialist group in the
Cabinet found in him their surest support. He arrived at Berlin on
the 8th and left on the nth after interviews with the Emperor,
Tirpitz, Bethmann-Hollweg,
and Jules Cambon. This visit, about
which no secrecy was maintained, which the officials of the
Foreign Office and the British Embassy at Berlin regarded with
intense dislike, Conservative opinion greeted with a polite scep
ticism and Radical opinion welcomed with enthusiasm, produced
a profound impression on the Continent. Haldane, it was believed,
was going to Berlin to pave the way for a personal visit by Grey
or Churchill in the immediate future, if the prospects of an agree
ment proved favourable. So many documents of every description
bearing upon thehave been published that nothing remains
visit
obscure. 1
We
must discuss the three points on which the conver
sations turned and relate the immediate results achieved in respect
to each and what forms the negotiation subsequently assumed.
It was the German Government which in 1909 had been the

first to propose a pact between the two countries and the British
Government which had refused, undoubtedly for very cogent

reasons. Now the British Government was the first to revive the
though the formula it put forward was

more cautious
proposal,
and vaguer than the German formula of 1909. The Cassel note
1
Th. von Bethmann-Hollweg. Betrachtungen zutn Weltkriege I Teil. Vor dem Kriege,
also Autobiography,
1919, pp. 50 sqq. Viscount Haldane, Before the War, 1920, pp. 57 sqq.,
and Politische Doku-
1929, pp. 238 sqq. A. von Tirpitz, ErinneTungen, 1920, pp. 185 sqq.;
mente, vol. i, pp. 280 sqq. Die Grosse Politik . vol. xxxi, pp. 95 sqq. British Documents ..
. .
.
vol. vi, pp. 666 sqq. Documents diplomatique* frangais, se Se*rie, vol. ii, passim. For
Haldane s
to Sir
secret meetings at night with Cassel during his visit to Berlin see his disclosures
Almeric Fitzroy (Sir Almeric Fitzroy, November 10, 1921, Memoirs, vol. ii, p. 765)-
571
suggested mutual assurances denying each other the power of

engaging in designs or combinations whose character might be
to whom the note was com
aggressive to the other Metternich,
.
municated, wanted the word aggressive expunged. England

would always maintain that her with France was defensive.
entente
He also wanted the word wars added to designs and combi
nations The change would render the formula a pact of uncon
.
ditional neutrality in the event of war. Germany wanted nothing

more from England should she ever decide to crush France by her
military strength. The interview between Bethmann-Hollweg
and Lord Haldane took precisely the same turn. Haldane proposed
a formula similar to that contained in the Cassel note. Bethmann-
Hollweg put forward an alternative formula consisting of four
articles in which the word aggression* was not used and it was
expressly stipulated that, if either of the High Contracting Powers

should find itself involved in a war with one or more powers, the
other should observe towards it at least an attitude of benevolent
neutrality and do everything in its power to localize the conflict.
The original draft had been worded should be attacked by one or
more powers This wording however raised the question how
.
<
aggression should be defined and we have just seen why the

German Government did not wish to raise the issue. Bethmann-
Hollweg had therefore thought it prudent to give the formula a
universal application. But the change made it dangerous. In the
impossible supposition, Lord Haldane asked, of a British attack
upon Denmark or Austria, did Germany really pledge herself to
a benevolent neutrality? And on the other hand, how was it
possible for England to promise Germany that if she ever made

an unprovoked attack upon France, England would stand aside
and even adopt an attitude of benevolence? Bethmann admitted
the force of the objection. He returned to his original formula
and even defined it more stringently. According to the tiew text,
the promise of benevolent neutrality was made conditional. It
was restricted to the eventuality that one or other of the contract
ing powers found itself involved in a war in which it was im
possible to say that it was the aggressor This was the point the
.
negotiations had reached when Haldane returned to England.

Conversations continued between Berlin and London. Haldane
did not want a visit which had focused the attention of the entire
world upon himself to end in a fiasco. Asquith and Grey would
572
have been delighted to find a formula which, without
alarming
France or Russia, would give sufficient satisfaction to
Germany to
induce her to slacken the pace of her naval construction. But the
Emperor William was perhaps right when he spoke of squaring
the circle and Grey, preoccupied by efforts to settle the
general
strike of the collieries, had little time to
spare for the question.
The permanent officials, who had been extremely annoyed by
Haldane s action, if only because their professional pride had been
hurt by a procedure which seemed to imply that the conflict be
tween England and Germany could be best settled without the
assistance of the professional diplomats, now took their
revenge.
Nicolson, who for the last eighteen months had replaced Hardinge
at the Foreign Office, was at pains to draw
up a formula as mean
1
ingless as possible. England will make no unprovoked attack
upon Germany and pursue no aggressive policy towards her.
Aggression upon Germany is not the object and forms no part of
any Treaty understanding or combination to which England is
now a party, nor will she become a party to anything that has
such an object/ It was a formula so empty that Paul Cambon, to
whom it was communicated, seems to have raised no objection.
But for that very reason it was not likely to satisfy the German
Government. It demanded the addition of the word neutrality .
Grey refused. The utmost to which he would agree was a slight

modification of the opening words. Instead of saying will make
no unprovoked he was prepared to say will neither
attack ,
make nor join in any unprovoked attack*. This was not sufficient
to satisfy Berlin. The Emperor lost his temper, talked of arming
against England, of ordering

a mobilization and finally wrote a
letter to the King of England in which he proposed point
personal
blank the conclusion of a treaty of alliance to which France should
be invited to adhere. 2 It was a western version of Bjorkoe even
1
*A formula which will be of as non-committal a character as possible, and also one
. . .
which will not bind our hands in regard to any eventualities which may possibly arise in
the future. (Sir A. Nicolson to Sir E. Goschen, March 13, 1912; British Documents . . . vol.
vi, p. 712.)
2
March 18, 1912 (Von Tirpitz, Politische Dokumente, vol. i, p. 331). Cf. a note of the
same date by the Emperor attached to a letter from Bethmann-Hollweg written the pre
vious day I am proposing to England since out of consideration for France she refuses
to pledge us her neutrality in place of a promise of neutrality an offensive and defensive
alliance in which France will be included. If England rejects the offer she will put herself in
the wrong in the eyes of the entire world, if she accepts, my position at home will be stronger.
At the same time Sen on must be informed that although France has behaved out
in Paris
entertains no
rageously towards the German army and nation, the present Government
573
professional
ê
seriously.
lough it was not until April 10 that Metternich officially in
formed the Foreign Offufe that since agreement had proved im
possible the German Government considered the negotiations
closed, by the middle of March, more exactly on March 20, the
two Governments must be considered to have abandoned all
hope of a satisfactory conclusion.
Nevertheless the affair had an unexpected sequel. On March 27
the British Ambassador in Paris, Sir Frances Bertie, alarmed by
the continuation of negotiations of which he disapproved in
principle, called on Raymond Poincare, who for the past six
weeks had been President of the Council and Minister for Foreign
Affairs, asked leave to speak as tKough he were not an Ambassa
c
dor and denounced Grey s weakness. lt is essential he declared,
, ,
that Cambon
should express his dissatisfaction. If you will only
employ firmer language in London, the false step I dread will not
1
be taken. In London there was no difficulty in reassuring Cam
bon. Grey, speaking on behalf of the entire Cabinet informed
him of his determination not to depart from his final declaration
to Metternich. Sir Edward Grey Nicolson explained, is
,
fully
aware of the situation and if he continues his conversations
with Metternich it is simply a matter of tactics. He does
not want the rupture to be his doing. 2 Poincare took the
opportunity to make a new proposition through the inter
mediary of Cambon.
In 1905 Lord Lansdowne had proposed to reinforce and extend
the entente with France. But when Delcasse wanted to
accept the
offer he was defeated by the opposition of Rouvier and his col
leagues and compelled to resign. The following winter Rouvier

had himself proposed to the British Government what he had
refused when England offered it. It was then his turn to be de
feated by the caution of the new Liberal Cabinet which had
just
taken office. In Cambon s opinion the time was
ripe after the
unfriendly designs and in the course of negotiations with England has made known its
willingness to include France in the alliance. If our proposal is refused the situation is dear.
We have done our duty. If it is accepted the peace of Europe is assured. The
agreement which
Haldane attempted to negotiate is dead. I will have nothing more to do with it*
(Die Grosse
Politik . . . vol. xxxi,
p. 187).
1
Raymond Poincare* to Paul Cambon, March 28, 1912. (Documents diplomatique* fran-
fttis, $e S&ie, vol. ii, pp. 264-5.)
2
De Heuriau to Raymond Poincar, April 4, 1912 (ibid., vol. ii, pp. 309-10).
574
Agadir episode to revive Lord Lansdowne s project and attempt

to define more precisely the obligations the entente
imposed on
the two Western Powers. 1 At the moment Cambon s
proposal
was not received favourably but it became evident in the course
of the summer that was a majority in the country which
if there
desired better relations with Germany there was an active
minority which favoured on the contrary a closer bond with
France. The Morning Post, the Daily Express, the
Spectator, the
Observer and the Pall Mall Gazette conducted a
campaign to trans
form the entente into a formal alliance. In the autumn Cambon
renewed -the attempt. The negotiations lasted a month, attended
by difficulties akin in certain respects to those which had rendered
the negotiations with Germany so difficult in the spring. But this
time they were overcome. On October 22, Grey and Cambon
exchanged letters in which it was agreed that, although the
arrangements between the armies and navies of the two countries
did not constitute an engagement obliging the two Governments
to take action under circumstances not yet realized and which
possibly might never arise if either Government had serious
,
reason to expect an unprovoked attack by a third power it would

immediately consult with the other, whether both Governments
should take concerted action to prevent aggression and maintain
peace and in the event of an affirmative answer should discuss the
concerted measures they were prepared to undertake What had .
been pronounced impossible between England and Germany

seemed possible between England and France. The negotiations
by which Bethmann-Hollweg had hoped to strengthen Ger
many s diplomatic position by weakening the entente had by a
strange repercussion reinforced the latter. Hitherto purely verbal,
a moral obligation and no more, it had assumed the character, in
however guarded a form, of a written agreement. Hitherto when
a British general had dealings with a French general, he represen
ted only the War Office. When Major-General Wilson visited
Paris in November he was in a position for the first time to speak
on behalf of the Cabinet as a whole.
1 Minute by Sir A. Nicolson, April 15, 1912. (British Documents . . . voL vi, p. 747-)
575
3
soon became clear that a pact of neutrality between

But if it
England and Germany which should not violate the spirit of the
Anglo-French entente was an impossibility, why should not
England oiler Germany a colonial agreement such as that which
France had accepted in 1904 and Russia in 1908 without any
alliance or pledge of neutrality? An agreement of this kind could
not be difficult to achieve. For there was no question in dispute
between the two powers. In 1898 a secret agreement had been
concluded for the partition of the Portuguese colonies. It had
never been put into operation. Had it lapsed? If so, why not re
vive it? On July 21, at the height of the Agadir crisis, Grey, while
protesting against the German claim to settle the question of
Morocco without consulting England, hinted to Metternich that
England was prepared to make concessions to Germany in Africa
if she were willing to negotiate with her instead of ignoring her.
In his speech of November 27, as we have already had occasion
to mention, he had used language susceptible of the same
interpre
tation. The speech had scarcely been delivered when Metternich
was bombarded with colonial offers of every description from
Englishmen belonging to the most diverse sections of society and
representing every shade of political allegiance. When they were
1
transmitted to the Emperor he repulsed them with indignation. 2

What had England to offer him? The property of other nations
to embroil him with their possessors and thus
promote the exclu
sive interest of British policy? But the Ambassador took these
advances more seriously, and discussed them with Grey on Decem
ber 20. In fact a possible colonial agreement was one of the three
points of the Cassel note, and extensive concessions outside
Europe were one of the inducements put forward by Haldane on
his arrival at Berlin ten days later to
persuade the German states
men to abandon their new naval law.
What was the character of the negotiations conducted in this
sphere by Haldane during his three days visit? His account is
extraordinarily reserved, and for obvious reasons. It would seem
in fact that
prepared as he was to purchase at a heavy price a halt
1
Count von Metternich to Bethmann-Hollweg, December 9, 1911 (Die Grosse Politik
. . . vol. xxxi, pp. 72-3).
2
Memorandum of Kaiser Wilhelm n, January 11, 1912. (ibid., vol. xxxi, pp. 92 sqq.)
576
in the German
naval programme, he expatiated imprudently on
the numerous colonial concessions which, according to him, his
country was prepared to make. In the event of a partition of the
Portuguese colonies, Germany, if she gave up her claim to the
Pacific island of Timor since Australia stood in the way, would
receive Loango, which by the terms of the agreement of 1898
was to have formed an English enclave in Angola, and England
might even promise the southern half of the Congo should it ever
cease to be Belgian. Finally, he was willing to acquiesce in a
German annexation of the islands of Zanzibar and Pemba if, in
the negotiations pending on the question of Bagdad, Germany
were willing to make more concessions to England in the region
of the Persian Gulf than she had hitherto been prepared to make.
But when Haldane returned his colleagues made him under
stand that he had perhaps lost his way in the maze of his diplo
matic metaphysics. The Foreign Office protested against the
danger of employing an amateur in such serious negotiations; the
Colonial Office complained that he had allowed himself to be
duped by men better acquainted with the geography of Africa
than himself. Nothing more was heard of the proposal for a
colonial agreement similar to those already concluded with
France and Russia. Nevertheless, the desire to improve the rela
tions between the two countries was still active in England, and
it was strengthened by circumstances to which we must return
later. Onthe question of Bagdad conversations continued. And

on the subject of the Portuguese colonies they
were revived after
an interval of fourteen years. The difficulties were not identical nor
equally serious in both cases.
The entire aspect of the Bagdad question had been changed
when, in November 1910, by an understanding ratified ten
months later by a formal instrument, the Russian Government
reached an agreement on the subject with the German. It was no
longer possible in this region to confront Germany with the con
certed policy of the Triple Entente. And the attitude of France on
the question had always been ambiguous. French financial interests
had been consistently in favour of an understanding in Turkey
with German industrialism. But when the French Foreign Office,
settle the basis of such
yielding to their pressure, had attempted to
an arrangement it had been confronted in 1900 with the veto of
Russia, in 1903 with the veto of Great Britain. Now, though
577
French diplomacy was more hostile to Germany than it had been
at that time, it was difficult for France to adopt a more uncom
promising attitude than her Russian ally and her British friend.
For months past England in view of Russia s change of front had
realized the necessity of reaching a solution as speedily as possible.
On July 31, 1911, when the Panther had been a month at anchor
in the harbour of Agadir, she proposed to Turkey to international
ize the line between Bagdad and Bassorah, Germany, Russia,
France, Turkey, and herself to hold equal shares; from Bassorah,
whose port would be built by a British company to the sea if the
railway should ever be taken beyond that point, the undertaking
would be reserved exclusively to Turkey and herself. But neither
Germany nor Turkey would agree to the proposal and for six
months Turkey left it unanswered. At the beginning of 1912 she
it.
definitely rejected
The difficulties were great. The India Office adopted on political
grounds an uncompromising attitude on any question which
might affect British supremacy on the coast of the Persian Gulf.
There were private interests to be considered, a British railway
company in the district of Smyrna, an irrigation company in
Mesopotamia, and an oil company. There were also French
financial interests at stake. If France was ready to stand aside in
Mesopotamia and on the Persian Gulf she demanded in compen

sation concessions to her railway enterprises in Asia Minor. A
settlement of the entire question seemed to have been reached at
last during the first half of 1914. A Franco-German
agreement
dealing with the railways in Asia Minor was signed on February
15, 1914. An agreement between England and Germany on the
subject of the Bagdad railway, also the railway between Smyrna
and Aidin, was initialled on June 15. Important concessions were
made to Germany, whose right to extend the line to Bassorah
was recognized. All that England asked was that two Englishmen
should sit on the board of directors. Detailed provisions were
laid down regulating the respective share of British and German
capital in financing the construction of the ports of Bagdad and

Bassorah, ia the navigation of the rivers, irrigation, and the extrac
tion of petroleum. An agreement was reached for the
joint con
struction and control, without underhand
competition, of the
railway system of Anatolia; and England reserved the right even
tually to construct a direct line between Egypt and the Persian
578
GuE After this the delays, deliberate or otherwise, of the Turkish
officials, whose consent was essential, protracted the settlement so
long that the Convention had not been signed by the end ofJuly.
Nevertheless, London and Berlin were anxious to reach a conclu
sion, Petersburg and Paris were consenting parties. On the eve
of the Great War, the four great Powers were in agreement upon
the division of spheres of influence throughout the territory
which represented what was still left of the Ottoman Empire. 1
The negotiations relative to the Portuguese colonies were more
difficult. Not that agreement on the fundamental issue was impos
sible; a convention:, was in fact initialled in August 191 3. 2 It was
1
For the negotiation of the Anglo-German agreement respecting Bagdad see Die
Grosse Politik vol. xxvii, pp. 139 sqq. See further the interesting and
. . .
mutually corrobor
ating statements of Marquis Pallavicini (Constantinople, April 5, 1913) and Count Mens-
dorfif (London, May 23, 1913) of the reasons for which in their opinion as a result of the
Balkan War England regarded German expansion in Asia Minor with less anxiety than
hitherto. (Qsterreich-Ungarns AussenpoUtik, vol. vi, pp. 40, 504.)
2 The
question of the Portuguese Colonies was in fact reopened by Grey on July 21,
1911 that to say, at the beginning of the Agadir crisis and the very day on which
is
Lloyd George delivered his bellicose speech. (Count von Metternich to Bethmann-
Hollweg, July 21, 1911; Die Grosse Politik . . . vol. xxix, p. 199). He would seem to have
believed at first that a friendly arrangement might be possible with Portugal, a bankrupt
State, for the purchase of her African colonies. An allusion hi his speech of November 27
is of this interpretation. Cf. in the Naval Annual 1912, pp. 17-18, the conclud
susceptible
ing paragraph of Lord Brassey s article entitled Suggestions on Naval Administration :
If no clouds had arisen in Morocco, we might shortly have found ourselves under serener
skies. It should have been possible to fulfil our obligations to France without giving offence
co Germany. To indicate how reconciliation might be effected would carry us too far into
politics. The cession of Walfisch Bay might fittingly be consideredas a suitable oppor
tunity. . . . Nor should it be impossible by friendly negotiations to obtain for South Africa
full powers of administration in Delagoa Bay, under the flag of Portugal. Saturday Review ,
January 20, 1912, p. 68: an article entitled An Anglo-German Deal The time is now :
rapidly approaching when Portugal, urgently in need of cash, will offer Angola to
German enterprise for a valuable consideration. have good grounds for saying
. . . We
that our Foreign Office privately intimated that to this acquisition of rich territory by
Germany we should raise no objection. . . . We
may assume that with Angola will pass
the islands of S. Thome and Principe, though they now form a separate province. . . .
When the break-up of the Portuguese Empire begins, it will go on. We ought at once to
make sure of Delagoa Bay. .
Strategists will be less interested in the fate of Portuguese
. .
Africa than in that of the Islands. Germany hankers after the Cape Verde group, but
. . .
she clearly understands we could not permit her to settle there. But is there any valid
objection to her acquiring the Azores, if we can buy the Cape Verde islands at the same
time? also Spectator, January 27, 1912, p. 140, article entitled Germany and the African
Colonies of Portugal *We have no doubt whatever that it would be greatly to the benefit
:
of the world if Germany could acquire the African colonies of Portugal, or to put it more
correctly, that portion of those colonies over which we do not possess a right of pre
emption a right which belongs to us in the matter of Delagoa Bay. Not only would it
be a great benefit to humanity that German rule, which if sometimes harsh, is, at any rate
efficient and gives no sanction or encouragement to slavery, should be substituted for
Portuguese rule; in addition Germany would be given the opportunity for expansion
which she desires, and on the greatest scale. Her African Empire would thus only require a
portion of the Congo Free State to make it stretch across the African continent from sea
to
sea.* But it soon became clear that Portugal had no intention of selling her colonies and it
then became necessary to negotiate, as in 1898, over the head of the Portuguese Government.
579
INTEBNATIONAL ANARCHY
more favourable to
Germany than its predecessor of 1898. For if
Germany renounced Timor and yielded to England in Mozam
bique a strip ofterritory to the north of the Zambesi and in Angola a
district adjoining Belgian
Katanga which constituted an enclave in
Rhodesia, she obtained in recompense by the cession of Loango the
entire African coast between the German colonies in South Africa
and the Belgian Congo and in addition the islands of San Thome
and Principe off the Congo coast. But England insisted that the
Convention should be laid before Parliament and thus made public.
And the German Government was opposed to its publication.
For the new agreement, unlike that of 1898, had been drawn
up in extremely cautious terms so as to deal only with the econo
mic development of the Portuguese colonies, carefully avoiding
possibility of their political annexation by
all reference to the
England or Germany. But in 1913 as in 1898 Germany cherished

the design of establishing, sooner or later, her sovereignty over
the regions which, the convention allotted to her sphere of in
fluence. And the indignation of the German public would be
even greater, if, as England also demanded, the publication of the
present agreement was accompanied by the publication of the
agreement of 1 898 whose secret clauses were far more explicit,
,
and, moreover, by the publication of the treaty of Windsor con

cluded the following year, which expressly confirmed the clause
of an old treaty of 1661 by which England pledged herself to
defend and protect all the conquests and colonies pertaining to the
5
crown of Portugal against all her enemies present or future .
German statesmen blamed this treaty of 1899, the work of Lord

1
Salisbury, for the fact that the convention of 1898 had remained
2
inoperative. In 1902 they had witnessed a British company
1 For the Anglo-Portuguese agreements of 1 898-9 see my History of the English People
vol. v, pp, 55-6. My conjectures are confirmed and completed by the revela
tions, made in 1912 by the Marquis de Several to Paul Cambon (De Fleuriau to Raymond
Poincare*, April 2, 1912; Documents diplomatique* frangais, se Se*rie, vol. ii, p. 296 sqq.).
2
Friedrich von Bernhardi, Deutschland und der ndchste
chap. v. "Weltmacht oder
Krieg>
Niedergang, p. 115 *. : . The financial or political collapse of Portugal might also provide
.
us with an opportunity to take

possession of a portion of her colonial possessions. There is
even good reason to suppose that agreements are in existence between England and Ger
many which contemplate a partition of the Portuguese colonies, though they have never
been published. "Whether, should the circumstances arise, England would be
prepared to
carry out honourably the provisions of such an agreement, supposing it actually to exist,
must indeed remain an open
question. She could find ways and means to render it ineffec
tive. It is indeed
widely asserted, though the report is denied by others, that immediately
after
^her convention with Germany for a partition of the Portuguese colonies Great
Biitain concluded a
special treaty with Portugal guaranteeing the integrity of her colonial
empire/
580
undertake the construction of a railway linking Katanga with the
port
of Benguela and traversing the entire zone which the con
vention of 1898 had appeared to surrender to German industry.
In 1913 , the very year in which the British Government was pre
in a modified form the convention of 1898, the
pared to confirm
Benguela railway company was still refusing offers of collabora
tion from German capital.
And at this juncture, to increase the difficulties of the British
Government, the French Government, to whom the negotiations
had been communicated, united its protests on this point to the
German protests. France, it is true, objected on grounds altogether
different from those which inspired the protests of Berlin. The
French Government disliked the agreement for its own sake, and
if it were to be published like the Franco-British agreement of
1904, it would assume an equal status in the eyes of the world. It

would oe liable to be interpreted as the preface to an hypocritical
alliance, a return to the policy of 1898, whose abandonment had
been sealed by the entente with France. The French opposition
finally overcome, but Berlin held out. When
was at last the
German Government agreed to publication it made a declaration
of its reluctance and insisted on certain conditions. Publication
was to be delayed until six months after the agreement had been
signed and the British Government
was to exert pressure at Lisbon
in the interval to secure a particular concession Germany desired
in Angola. We
must also bear in mind the date at which the
German Government finally agreed to the convention being pub
1
lished. It was July For three days the whole of Europe
27, I9I4-
had been confronted with a problem of the most extreme gravity
and German diplomacy was anxious to do everything in its power
to conciliate England.
Wehave followed to 1914 the story of the two negotiations

begun, or more accurately reopened,
in February 1912 after
Haldane s visit to Berlin, on the subject of the Bagdad railway,
and the Portuguese colonies. But we must not forget that neither
of these two questions, nor even the question of neutrality con-
1
For the negotiations of the Anglo-German convention respecting the Portuguese
colonies see Die Grosse Politik . . . vol. xxxvii, pp. I sqq.
5 8i
stituted the essence of Haldane s mission. His real objective was
to secure a slackening in the pace of German naval construction,
and everything turned on the price, colonial concessions, a pact
of neutrality, which England was prepared to pay. Germany s
terms were onerous, but if England protested she could always
reply that great sacrifices were being asked of her. She was being
asked to regulate the size of her fleet, not in accordance with the
standard she regarded as necessary to protect her commerce and
uphold her prestige, but by the standard prescribed by the secur
ity and prestige of a foreign power. At every turn we are brought
back to the struggle between the two navies. England needed her
supremacy at sea to ensure supplies in time of war and to banish
the danger of invasion which haunted the Continental nations
and compelled them to bear the burden of conscription. But the
habit of counting upon the protection of her navy was so deeply
ingrained in the British mind that it had become an mstinct.
England was in love with her navy. Any threat to its supremacy
was nothing short of an insult to the national honour. Von Biilow,
who employed the leisure of his banishment from political life
to meditate upon his country s policy and the international situa
tion, was wide of the mark when he wrote: The mainspring of
British policy is national selfishness, the mainspring of French
policy, national idealism and went on to draw the conclusion

that one who seeks his interest with cold-blooded calculation
will always prove at the decisive moment master of one who
1
pursues an ideal The English would have liked perhaps to settle
.
their difference with the Germans as men of business. But it was
impossible. Their navy had a sentimental value for them and

Churchill expressed perfectly the true state of affairs when, in an
interview with the German Ambassador, he
attempted to make
him understand that the German fleet was an Alsace-Lorraine
between the two countries. 2
It was the
question of the rival navies whichhad reached a critical
phase, this winter of 191 1-12, partly as a result ofthe Agadir incident
but also for two other reasons, of which one was
directly con
nected with Agadir, the other had whatever to do with it.
nothing
The former was the transference of Churchill to the Admiralty.
1
1Fupt von Biilow, Deutsche Politik . . . 1916, p. 114.
Prince Lichnowsky to Bethmann-Hollweg. April 30, 1913, Die Grosse Politik . . . vol.
xxxix, p. 38. Cf. The letter written the same day to Tirpitz by the German naval attache
(Von Tirpitz, Politische Dokumente, vol. i, p. 391).
582
The real significance of this appointment was not immediately
apparent.
For five or six years he had been, together with Lloyd
George, the foremost champion in the Cabinet of a policy of
peace and disarmament, and at the time of the Agadir crisis
it
was not he but Lloyd George who had surprised Europe by an

unexpectedly warlike speech. Had he then remained faithful to
the principles he had professed before Agadir? Would he, like his
father in a Conservative Cabinet, advocate a policy of naval
retrenchment? He had begun army, and several
his career in the
later incidents had proved that this liberal, even ultra-liberal
politician,
had remained a soldier at heart. Possibly he felt that
he had recovered his vocation, when, as Home Secretary, he des
patched the police, his police, to put down a band
of Russian
anarchists in an East End tenement and like a genuine soldier had
directed their operations on the scene of action. Nor can we be in
any doubt as to the spirit in which he entered upon his duties at

the Admiralty when we remember that he had left the Home
Office because the too martial methods he had employed to put
down summer had
the labour disturbances during the previous
rendered his position impossible. The Germans were greatly
alarmed by the arrival at the Admiralty of a man whom they
labelled an unscrupulous demagogue , a second edition of Cham
berlain , a man of unbridled ambition , who could be trusted to
c
make use of his new position to increase

his popularity at the first
1
international crisis by adding fuel to the flames . The fact that in
a few months he had effected a complete change in the high com
mand of the navy confirmed the estimate of those who had expec
ted him to provea fighter. He did not dare to recall Fisher and
but he made him
plunge the entire service into internecine feud,
his confidant and corresponded regularly with him. Out of the
four Sea Lords he got rid of three. Only the third, Rear-Admiral
Briggs, retained
Tm position. The term of office of Sir Arthur
Wilson, the First Sea Lord, was due to expire. It was not renewed.
He was Francis Bridgeman, who a few months
replaced by Sir
2
later was in turn brusquely dismissed, Prince Louis of Battenberg
1 The London Captain "Widenmann to Tirpitz (Die Grosse Politik .
naval attache in ._
.
vol. xxxi,~p. 13). Note by the German Minister of Marine, November 1911. (Von Tirpitz,
Politische Dokumente, vol. i, pp. 255-6.)
* For the dismissal of Sir Francis
Bridgeman see the heated debate in the House of
Commons between Churchill and Lord Charles Beresford (H. of C, December II, 1 8,
20, 1912, Parliamentary Debates, Commons 1912, 5th Series, voL xlv, pp, 433-4, *4<$9 ^^
1875 sqq.) ; also A. MacCallum Scott, Winston Churchill in Peace and War, 1916, p- 43-
583
became Second Sea Lord in place of Sir George Egerton, and
Captain Pakenham Fourth Sea Lord in place of Rear-Admiral
Madden. 1 Immediately after his appointment Churchill satisfied
what had been the general desire of the public ever since the scare
in August by effecting at the Admiralty the reform Haldane had
accomplished at the War Office. He instituted a Naval War Staff,

the brain of the British navy, to work out plans of campaign for
future wars and through which all candidates for naval command
2
must Its functions were
pass. purely advisory. The responsibility
for the decisions taken rested with the First Lord of the Admiralty.
Equipped with this novel bureau of information and surrounded

by new councillors of his own choice, Churchill felt himself a
naval commander. He divided his time between the Admiralty
and its official yacht the Enchantress, in which he made voyages of
inspection and study. His enemies complained that when he was
present at manoeuvres he interposed with advice which was almost
a command and was too ready to play the admiral. In short, for
the first time for many years, the First Lord of the Admiralty was
not the mere mouthpiece of the Sea Lords. A statesman of the
first rank had arisen at the 3
Admiralty to confront Tirpitz.
For at the moment when the Agadir crisis placed Churchill at

the Admiralty the execution of the German naval law had reached
a critical point, though the
question of Morocco played no part in
the matter. Ever since 1900 Berlin had been
straining every nerve
to build up a huge navy, but the question of
personnel had not
received corresponding attention. There were not sufficient sailors
to man the German fleet and in autumn when one class of sailors
having completed its two years service left the navy the vessels
1
For these changes see H. of C., November 28, 1911 (Parliamentary Delates, vol. xxxii,
PP. 359 sqq.).
2 Naval War Staff, Memorandum by the First Lord on a Naval War Staff, January I, 1912
(published as an appendix to the Statement by the First Lord of the Admiralty explanatory of
the Navy Estimates, i912-1913}. See further the circular addressed on
May 11, 1912 to all
commanders-in-chief, captains, commanders and commanding officers* (The Times,
March 14,1912).
3
For Winston Churchill at the Admiralty see an
interesting chapter in A. MacCallum
Scott, Winston Churchill in Peace and War, 1916, pp. 41 sqq.
584
were left for the moment practically empty. The navy was obliged
to ask for reinforcements. In place of an annual increase of 3,500
men which would produce in 1917 a total of 86,500 sailors, Tirpitz
obtained from the Reichstag 15,000 additional seamen of all
ranks which would raise the entire personnel of the navy in 1920
to the figure of 101,500. This would make it possible to maintain
three squadrons, instead of two, on active service that is to say,
twenty-five capital ships instead of seventeen. On the other hand,
whereas the programme as originally laid down provided for the
construction of four capital ships every year up to the current year
1912, for the next five years that is to say, until 1917 it made
provision for the annual construction of no more than two. As
we should expect, the Ministry of Marine and the Navy League
protested against this sudden decrease in naval construction. And
the entire shipbuilding industry echoed their protests. For it is the
tragic feature of modern industry and of the armament industry

with the rest that it leads of its very nature to over-production.
To increase the output the apparatus of production is extended,
and it therefore becomes impossible to slow down the rate of
production without throwing workmen and engineers out of
employment and tying up capital, and industry is condemned
to go on producing , a tempo it cannot slacken. Tirpitz asked
.
for an extra vessel to be laid down annually for the next six
years that is, a total construction of three battle cruisers to

replace those condemned as obsolete and three Dreadnoughts
over and above those for which the programme of 1900 made
provision.
We have however already had occasion to speak of the oppo
sition in official circles to a new naval law.
was so powerful that
It
the Emperor was obliged to make concessions. They were not

concerned with the increase of personnel or the formation of a
third squadron but solely with the construction of new ships. In
the first place the three cruisers were given up. Instead of laying
down six ships between 1912 and 1917 in addition to those pro
vided by the original programme, only three would be built, the
first in 1912, the second in 1914, and the third in 1916. This was
the position when Haldane visited Berlin. The condition on which

the Emperor would agree to slacken the pace of German naval
construction was that England should abandon her programme
of laying down two capital ships
for one German and accept the
585
proportion of three to two which Grey had

himself proposed a
few months before Agadir. Haldane made no direct reply. He
the number of
expressed himself indifferent to the increase
in
ships on the active list and its corollary an increased personnel. He

gave the Germans with whom he talked to understand that only
one subject caused his English colleagues anxiety the programme
of naval construction. He suggested that an understanding might
be reached if Germany consented not to lay down an additional
ship in 1912, but build the first in 1913, a second in 1915, and post
pone indefinitely the construction of the third.
Perhaps he thought this clever tactics. When he returned to
London he found that his colleagues were of a very different
opinion. He might have taken warning from a speech made by

Churchill at Glasgow on February 9, the day before the Berlin
conversations opened. In this speech Churchill formulated the
British attitude on the naval question in terms which became
canonical: The British Navy is to us a necessity and, from some
points of view, the German Navy is to them more in the nature

of a luxury. Our naval power involves British existence. It is
existence to us; it is
expansion to them. ... It is the British Navy
which makes Britain a great Power. But Germany was a great
Power, respected and honoured all over e world, before she
had a single ship The effort which at the same moment the
.
German Government was demanding from the Reichstag and

the nation to increase the personnel of army and navy alike was
the challenge of an overpeopled Germany, not only to France but
to England herself; for the Germans were convinced that an
England short of men and obliged to purchase crews for her navy
could not maintain for long a struggle against Germany, where
conscription was in force and the population increasing at the
rate of a million a year. 1
Experts pointed out to Haldane that the
formation of a third squadron on active service which he regarded
so lightly constituted a new danger. It meant a German fleet
per
manently mobilized in the North Sea against England, ready
when the signal was given to make a sudden attack. And the
construction of ships in excess of the number laid down in the
programme of 1900, however few, necessitated the construction
1
Count von Mettemich to Bethmann-Hollweg, November i, 1911: *. . , England is
convinced of her ability to sustain, if need be, a competition in armaments, longer than
we, because she believes that she possesses the longer purse. The Emperor wrote in the
margin *She has fewer men* (Die Grosse Politik . . . vol. xxxi, p. 21).
586
of additional English vessels. If the object of Haldane s visit had
been to prevent this further competition he had failed.
And in fact when Churchill produced navy estimates lower by
.307,000 than those for the current year he explained that they
were provisional. He asked for an immediate increase of two
thousand men. He proposed to lay down new cruisers. But he
intended eventually to make further demands both for men and
ships when the German estimates became known. As between the
capital ships of the two nations he would accept a proportion of
sixteen to ten, a proportion not far from the ratio of three to two
which had been suggested. But only on condition that Germany
did not exceed the programme of 1900. If in the course of the next
six years she were to build additional vessels, England would
accept her challenge and return to the old proportion of two keels
to one If during these six years Germany laid down three extra
.
ships, England would lay down six. If she built only two, England
would build four. There was no note of aggression in this rejoin
der; and Churchill put forward the novel suggestion that, if
Germany were willing to proclaim a naval holiday for one year
during which she would not lay down a single new man-of-war,
England would undertake to do the same. In May the German
programme was made public. Bethmann-Hollweg and Haldane
had defeated the Emperor and Tirpitz, though not without a
hard struggle, in the course of which the Chancellor had been
driven to the threat of resignation. Only two Dreadnoughts were
to be built during the next six years instead of the three decided
upon in February, and the six capital ships, ironclads and cruisers,
for which Tirpitz had asked in November. When therefore
Churchill presented in July his supplementary navy estimates, he
was content with four additional Dreadnoughts to be built be
tween 1913 and 1917. But at the same time he was obliged to
take into account the German formation of a third active squadron
and the increase in her personnel. Amid the chilly silence of the
Radicals and the applause of the Opposition he asked for a supple
1
mentary grant of ^990,ooo. j
1
H. of C., July 22, 1912 (Parliamentary Debates, Commons 1912; 5th Series, vol. xE,
pp. 838 sqq.).
587
6
No English Lord of the Admiralty since the century opened

had spoken so frankly of the German peril, yet no English navy
estimates were received with greater calm by German opinion.
The official attitude in Berlin was satisfaction. And the following
year Tirpitz astonished the world by his moderation. He rejected
the imputation of harbouring hostility towards England. He
would be satisfied with the proportion of sixteen to ten, with
which England, or so at least he hoped, was now content. That
proportion he said, makes us sufficiently strong to be secure
,
against attack. The naval law guarantees its maintenance. We

desire nothing more/ 1 How are we to explain this sudden calm
after such feverish activity? The Foreign Office thought it knew
the answer and on March 5 Grey wrote as follows to the British
Ambassador in Berlin: I do not wish you to say anything about
Tirpitz s statement, unless something is said to you, because 1
agree that what Tirpitz said does not amount to much, and the
reason of his saying it is not the love of our beautiful eyes, but the
extra fifty millions required for increasing the German Army. 2
In October 191 1 , at the moment the Agadir crisis reached a solu-
1 From a statement made
by Tirpitz on February 6, 1913, to the financial committee of
the Reichstag. Macnamara, Parliamentary Secretary to the Admiralty, speaking on behalf
of Churchill in the House of Commons on February 11, expressed the satisfaction univer
sally felt in England at the new tone adopted by Germany in regard to the naval question.
(Parliamentary Debates, Commons 1913, 5th Series, vol. xlviii, p. 685.)
2
SirE. Grey to SirE. Goschen, March 5, 1913 (Lord Grey of Fallodon, Twenty-jive
Years, vol. Lloyd George, interview given to the Daily Chronicle, January I,
i, p. 257). Cf.
1914. Of two
reasons suggested for the relaxation of the naval competition between
England and Germany Lloyd George chose the following that Continental nations are
directing their energies more and more to the strengthening of their land forces. For years
Germany seemed to have set her heart upon, and put her best thought into, the develop
ment of her naval power. But the experiences of the last two years have reminded her of
a lesson which all European nations have had from time to time to learn. And that is, that
if a country concentrates its energies upon one branch of its defensive forces, it is
generally
at the expense of the other. The German army is vital to the very life and
independence
of the nation itself, surrounded as Germany is by other nations, each of which possesses
armies almost as powerful as herself. . . Certainly Germany has nothing (so far as her
.
army is concerned) which approximates to a Two-Power Standard. She has, therefore,

become alarmed by recent events, and is spending huge sums of money on the expansion
of her military resources. That is why I feel convinced that even if Germany ever had any
idea of challenging our supremacy at sea, the exigencies of the
military situation must
out of her head Cf. J. Ellis Barker, The Failure of Post-
~" - it completely
necessarily put - - ----- - - - -
^
"
especially
: a Letter
. ... .
AA , JU/
, ._e article,
possibly the best written before August 1914 on the origins of the war, see Lichnowsky s
appreciative comments (Letter to Bethmann-Hollweg, June 10, 1914: Die Grosse Politik
. . . vol. xxxrx, p. 621).
588
appeared of Bernhardi s famous work, Ger

tion, the first edition
many and Next War?- The writer was far from suggesting that
the
his country should give up her navy. But he was opposed in prin
ciple
to any strategy which involved a conflict with the British
navy on the high seas.

Germany should be content to defend her
which were to be expected,
shores against the attempts at invasion
and by reinforcing her fleet of torpedo-boats and submarines and
evading the British blockade must pkce herself in a position to
reply to it by destroying the greatest possible number
of British
merchant vessels. She must take the offensive on land and to free
her hands in the east must begin under any circumstances by
crushing France, whose army, too weak to invade German terri
tory, would otherwise by
its mere existence render an offensive
on any other front impossible. 2 These views had been held for
many years by the German staff. The novel feature of the situation
was the fact that the civil authorities were coming round to them.
We have already observed as an immediate repercussion of the
of the Govern
Agadir incident, the pressure exerted in the counsels
ment by the champions of a stronger army to secure, in the teeth
of Tirpitz and the Emperor, a reduction in the new naval pro
gramme, while the Reichstag was to be asked to pass a new army
law. It was also a novelty that these ideas were now publicly
expressed, not only by Bernhardi,
but by others whose opinions
carried weight. In January 1912, A League to secure
3 a stronger
1
Deutschland und der n&chste Krieg. The sixth edition revised in view of the alterations
in the military and political situation* was published in 1913.
2
In the first place our political position would be enormously improved if we could
free ourselves once and for all from the constant danger that France will attack us on the
first favourable opportunity as soon as our hands are full elsewhere. One way or another
France must be put out of action if we would be free to pursue the general aims of our policy.
This is the first and most essential condition of a sound German policy, and since it is impos
sible to rid ourselves finally oi French hostility by peaceful methods, we must do so by
force. France must be so completely crushed, that she can never cross our path again*
(Deutschland und der n&chste Krieg, pp. 113-4)-
8
In a lecture entitled Deutsobland und England. Heeres oder Flottenverstarkung? Bin
historisch-politischer Vertrag, gehalten
an 25 Jan. 1912 in der Heidelberger Ortsgruppe
des Deutschen Flottenverein (Germany and England. Should we strengthen our Army
.
or Navy? An Historical and Political Lecture delivered on January 25, 1912, to the Heidel
the German historian Hermann Oncken
berg group of the German Navy League),
develops the argument that if Germany
wished to help the English Radicals to overthrow
It was the army that must be
Grey it was the worst possible tactics to build men-of-war.
reinforced. *To strengthen our army is a real, indeed our best safeguard 1
against England
a direct threat. It is a protection on
herself, and does not arouse her to violent action by
is not there
the Continent against the English dagger*. "The demand for a stronger army
fore the expression of an uncalculating military enthusiasm. Itîs due simply and solely
to
a practical consideration of our opponent s strength with which we have to reckon and
of the ajms we intend to achieve. A powerful army is the weapon which will wound
589
Army was formed which, copying the methods of propaganda

employed by the Navy League, in a far shorter space of time
effected for the army what the latter had done for the navy at the
close of the nineteenth century. For several years Germany re
assured by the complete disorganization of the Russian army and
the increasing deterioration of the French had lost much of her
interest in the army and turned her eyes to the sea. Given the
enormous of the German population it was sufficient if
increase
half the young men of twenty were called to the colours. The
position would soon be changed.
By the army law of 1912 two new army corps were formed,
one on the Russian frontier, the other on the French, and meas
ures were adopted to secure that on these two firontiers ten army
corps out of twenty-five should be permanently maintained on

what was approximately a war footing. The law of 1913 of a far
more redoubtable character added a third battalion of eighteen
infantry regiments, formed new regiments
of cavalry and heavy
and increased the effectives by 4,000 officers, 15,000 non
artillery,
commissioned officers, 117,000 corporals and privates and 27,000
horses. As a result of these two successive measures Germany was
maintaining under the colours in time of peace 870,000 instead of

625,000 troops, and in the event of war could put into the field an
army of 5,400,000. The law of 1913 was passed amid an outburst
of patriotic enthusiasm, stimulated by the celebrations which
commemorated the centenary of the war of independence. And
these celebrations inevitably lent German patriotism an aspect of
hostility to France which replaced the anti-English feeling by

which it had so often been coloured in the immediate past.
This powerful current of public opinion carried the Emperor
with it. How could he long remain deaf to the appeal of a patriotic
him in Hs most vulnerable spot, his system of a Continental balance of power.*
(Historische politische Aufs&tzeand Reden, vol. i, pp. 167 sqq.). Almost two years later
Oncken contributed to the Quarterly Review (October 1913, Art. 13, Germany under
William IT, 1888-1913, vol. ccxix, pp. 566 sqq.) an article in which he argues that since
Germany s policy had become continental instead of naval the moment is favourable for
a rapprochement between the two nations. *As this impression (that the German nation
desires peace) gains strength in England, it may be legitimate to hope that the de tente, thus
carefully prepared and utilized, wul eventually lead to an Anglo-German agreement. An
agreement of this kind embracing, as it naturally would, both the Near East and Central
Africa, would inspire the German people with the conviction that England is prepared
loyally to throw open to them the roads which have hitherto been kept systematically
barred against them. 3h any case, the ties which bind the two nations together are, after
all, stronger than the rivalries which divide them* and in support of his contention he
refers to his lecture of 1912.
590
sentiment which, as he was well aware, charged him with weak
ness and held him responsible for the shameful retreats which had
led Germany from Tangier to the agreement of November 4,
1
191 1. But he had done nothing to arouse it. On
the contrary he
was witnessing, and he knew it, the ruin of that dream of an anti-
British naval expansion which had been his consistent ideal
throughout his reign. It was a policy which necessitated friendship
not only with Russia but with France. But it was becoming only
too clear that, so far as France was concerned, it had failed. Cail-
laux s fall had brought into office the conscientious and industrious
bourgeois and keen lawyer who for many years to come would
embody French policy in the eyes of the world. Raymond Poin-
care put an end to the attempts recently made by French diplo
macy to explore avenues to an understanding with Italy, Austria,
and Germany. These attempts had been marred by two defects.
They were inconsistent and they tended to loosen the entente with
England and the alliance with Russia and might perhaps leave
France finally isolated when another crisis arose like those of
Tangier and Agadir. Poincare desired to strengthen the alliance
with Russia, and make the entente with England for all practical
purposes an alliance, so that the Triple Alliance might be per
manently counterbalanced by a reorganized Triple Entente. The
competition in armies began once more between the Continental
Powers. After hesitating for several months and leaving unan
swered the German law of 1912, which was itself the response to
Caillaux s fall, France replied to the law of 1913 by the supreme
effort of imposing three years military service ihstead of two
upon the entire youth of France. Russia also armed in answer to

the German armaments. The ruling class indulged the belief that
1 We may refer in this connection to Gerhart Hauptmann s topical drama, Festspiel im
deutschen Reimen, a Memorial to the Spirit of the War of Independence*. The Crown
Prince attended its production at Breslau and applauded the authors allusions to his
father s incapacity. We may quote in particular the words Hauptmann places in Schnad-
horst s mouth:
A forest of heroes our land,
fills
Not spinsters we pass with

a beck of the hand,
Warriors march thick as the grains of sand.
If only a new old Fritz might grace

To delight our hearts, the leader s place !
But a man we lack to match the mood
Of the hour, the monarch of Germanhood,
Of prince and people to bow the knee,
And show them the path to liberty.
\OLVI-ai 59 *
the revolution had been finally defeated and began once more to
alarm the world by the number, if not the organization, of
Russia s armed forces. In his speech of November 27, Grey had
conjured up the spectre of a Europe united against England. The
danger had been dispelled. All the Great Powers of Europe were
arming against each other. It was a guarantee for the security of
Great Britain.
Unfortunately if the Foreign Office by the new system of

ententes inaugurated in 1904 had dispelled certain risks, the system
itself may well have involved England in a new
danger the
danger of being dragged by the armed powers into a European
war. There was a group of alarmists who were never weary of
insisting upon the German peril and demanding the transforma
tion of the entente cordiale into an alliance. They denounced the
presumed designs of the German Government on the Dutch port

of Flushing on the Belgian frontier. They sought opportunities
to create a panic and as a further ground for alarm pointed out
that England possessed few or no aeroplanes, few or none of those
Zeppelins which were the pride of Germany. And from time to

time the absurd rumour was circulated that a squadron of these
airships had been seen flying above some English county or other.
1
But the scaremongers did not make the same impression on the
public as they had done four years earlier. Throughout the
country there was a widespread desire to loosen without actually
breaking network
the of
ententes and it was to satisfy public
feeling
that the Cabinet despatched Haldane to Berlin and negotiated on
the subject of the Bagdad railways and the Portuguese colonies.
Anti-German literature no longer found readers. 2 The important
1 F.
W. Hirst, The Six Panics and Other Essays. 1913, pp. 103 sqq,
2
Charles Sarolea, The Anglo-German Problem, Ed. i, December 1912. See especially
pp. 36-7. . . . One of the crucial points of the Anglo-German controversy the naval
policy of the German Empire. I advisedly said one of the critical points, foi it is by no
means the only one nor even, in my opinion, the most important one. As I shall presently
endeavour to prove, if Germany suddenly decided to reduce her naval armaments and to increase
her army in proportion, England would have even more serious reasons for
anxiety than she has at
present. Why? Because (pp. 43-4) *the greatest danger to England is not the invasion of
England, it is the invasion of France and Belgium It is ,.. in France and
Belgium that
the vulnerable point lies, the Achilles heel of the British Empire But the book attracted
.
no attention whatever. It was only after the declaration of war that it reached a second,
third and fourth edition. (August, October 1914.; February 1915.) See also: Archibald
592
reviews closed their columns to writers of articles against Ger
many. Among young had become more fashion

intellectuals it
able than ever to regard Germany as a second mother 1
country.
After the Agadir crisis, as after the naval panic of 1909, conferences
were held and committees formed to seek a basis of reconciliation
between the two nations. 2 After the brief interregnum of Baron
Hurd and Henry Castle, German Sea-Power, Its Rise, Progress, and Economic Laws 1913. But
its tone differs from that of Hurd s earlier works and the introduction ends with an appeal
for a rapprochement (pp.
xiy-rv):
"The
only hope for the disappearance of the antagonism
between the two peoples lies in a comprehension of each other s economic and strategical
necessities; and, if this volume succeeds in giving to Englishmen a truer conception of
German policy and German economic and maritime development, and to Germans a
better appreciation of the position of the British people as the guardians of an Empire to
which unchallengeable sea-power is a necessity, it will have done something to dispel
those dark clouds which still hang menacingly on the political hon2on. J. A. Cramb,
Germany and England, 1914 (A. C. Bradley s preface is dated April) is the posthumous
publication of a course of lectures delivered in February and March 1913. The work is
deliberately bellicose, but bizarre conclusion deserves to be quoted (pp. 136-7). If the
its
dire event of a war with Germany if it is a dire event should ever occur, there shall
be seen upon this earth of ours a conflict which, beyond all others, will recall that descrip
tion of the great Greek wars:
"Heroes in battle with heroes,
And above them the wrathful gods."

And one can imagine the ancient, mighty deity of all Teutonic kindred, throned above
ihe clouds, looking serenely down upon the conflict, upon his favourite children the
English and the Germans, locked in a death struggle, smiling upon the heroism of that
struggle, the heroism of the children of Odin the War-God/
1
Germany which I feel to be my own country after England.* (F. H. Keeling to Mrs.
Townshend, August 2, 1914. Keeling Letters and Recollections, 1918, p. 178.) Keeling con
tinues: "The best thing that can happen now is for Germany to be victorious everywhere
on land and for us to come out top everywhere on sea/
2
See the two special numbers, devoted to a rapprochement between England and Ger
many, of Ludwig Stein s review, Nord und Bud (36 Jahrgang. Bd. 14. June and July 1912)
also : Deutschland vtnd England in ihren wissenschaftlichen, politischen und kulturellen Bezie-
hungen. Verhandlungen der Deutchs-Englischen Verst&ndigungskonferenz (vom 30 Oktober bis
zum 1 November 1912). Im Auftrage der Vereinigten Komittees. Herausgegeben von Ernst Sieper
1913. (Germany and England in their scientific, political, and cultural relations. Proceed
ings of the German-English Conciliation Conference held from October 30 to November
1, 1912. Published for the Joint Committee by Ernst Sieper, 1913. Translated into English
under the title England and Germany.) The questions discussed by the conference were: I.
Economic competition, 2. The Press. 3. The immunity of private property in wartime.
4. The demarcation of the colonial spheres of interest of both countries. The question of
the navy was, therefore, prudently omitted. See further: Germany in the Nineteenth Cen
tury, five lectures by J. H. Rose, C. M. Herford, E. C. K. Conner and M. E. Sadler. With
an introductory note by Viscount Haldane. Manchester University Press, 1912. Holland
Rose s article on political history* concludes with a defence of German policy (pp. 20-22) :
*It is unquestionable that the formation of the German Empire has conduced to the peace
of the world. If we look at the past, we find that our forefathers dreaded France far
more than the wildest alarmist now dreads Germany. And their dread was with reason.
The position of France gives her great advantages for an attack on England and English
commerce. . . . When France and Spain were leagued together against us, as was often
the case, the blockade of their combined fleets was well-nigh impossible. That of the
German naval ports is a fir simpler task. Further the geographical position of Germany is
far weaker than that of France. She has no natural frontiers on the East and poor barriers
on the South and West. Her poHcy is therefore almost necessarily defensive. ... By land
she is easily assailable on three sides; by sea she is less vulnerable; but there she labours
593
Marschall, Prince Lichnowsky succeeded as German Ambassador
in London Count Metternich, who had been recalled in disgrace.
By his wealth, the lavish scale on which he entertained, and his

affability he made Embassythe with his wife s help- an important
social centre. He was a friend of Asquith, Grey, and Haldane.
Oxford gave him a public reception. When the summer of 1914
opened, he could boast that he had conquered British society.
Why did the public with a determination which seemed to
increase in strength refuse to heed war cries which had evoked
so wide a response in 1908. In the first place there was a keen desire
to remain neutral in the event of a European war. And in the
second place public attention was absorbed by serious domestic
problems. A general strike in the collieries accompanied Haldane s
mission and the speeches in which Churchill developed his naval
programme. The threat of civil war in Ireland became ever more
urgent. It was enough to face revolution without facing war as
well. The Daily News and the Manchester Guardian every morning,
the Nation every Saturday, denounced the policy of armaments.
A general election was approaching. How could a Government
which had avowedly been put into power at the opening of 1906
on a programme of opposition to a ruinous imperialism justify
to Radical voters the increase in the navy estimates since 1908 ?
its
In the Cabinet itself Churchill had to face a determined

opposi
tion. Until 1911 it was he who, first at the Board of Trade then at
the Home Office, had attacked McKenna, the First Lord of the
Admiralty, for yielding to the exorbitant demands of his Board.
Now he was at the Admiralty and McKenna at the Home Office
retorted his former criticisms. Until 1911 the imperialism of
Asquith, Grey, and Haldane had been attacked by the formidable

combination of Lloyd George and Churchill. Now, after those
few weeks when all five had agreed in opposing the German
under a great disadvantage, viz. that her oceanic commerce has to pass through the Straits
of Dover and down the English Channel, within easy striking distance of the French and
British fleets at Brest, Plymouth, Cherbourg, Portsmouth and Dover. This is what makes
her nervous about her mercantile marine. This is what makes her build a great fleet; and
again I say, were we in her situation we should do the same. The events of the years
i $66-1 871. .
helped her to build up on a sure basis a new European system which has
.
maintained the peace for forty years German unification effected at one stroke what
Great Britain with all her expenditure of blood and treasure had never been able to effect;
namely, to assure the Balance of Power in so decisive a way as to make a. great war the
most risky of ventures/ For the entire movement in favour of a rapprochement between
England and Germany see Bernadotte Everly Schmitt, England and Germany,
1916, pp. 353 sqq,
594
had become a moderate group pushed
threat, the three imperialists
forward by Churchill, held back by Lloyd George. The recurrent
disputes
between these two statesmen when the annual Budget
was drawn up were an additional source of embarrassment to a
Cabinet battling with so many difficulties. No doubt the two
demagogues were fully convinced of their sincerity when they
championed their conflicting views in the Cabinet. Each had
returned to his youthful creed Churchill the aristocrat and sol
dier, Lloyd George the plebeian and humanitarian pietist. But we
must not forget that the parliamentary struggle had its reverse.
The two tribunes remained the intimate personal friends they had
become between 1906 and 1911, and continued to hold long con
versations almost daily at Westminster. 1 However sharply they
might appear to disagree on one of the most serious issues of the

day, on one point at least they found it easy to agree. In the
Liberal Cabinet they alone counted for anything. All the others
were ciphers.
At of 1913 the conflict assumed a dramatic character.
the close
In 1912 and in 1913 the Budget, on the new foundation laid by
Lloyd George in 1909, met without additional taxation the in
creased demands of the Admiralty. But this time the Admiralty
asked too much. The navy estimates had approached the figure of
.43,000,000 in 1911-12, had exceeded .44,000,000 in 1913-14.
Now the Admiralty was asking for .51,550,000. In December
the National Liberal Federation organized an agitation on a large
scale against the increased expenditure on the navy. On January i,
Lloyd George in a lengthy interview given to the Daily Chronicle

spoke of the improvement in the relations between England and
Germany, insisted that it justified a decrease in naval expenditure,
and recalled how almost thirty years before Churchill s father
had resigned his position as Chancellor of the Exchequer in a
Conservative administration, because the Government had refused
to reduce the army estimates. Churchill found it necessary to visit
Paris to remove the anxiety of the French Minister of Marine. He
Asquith to his wife, January 23, 1914: I think we shall get through our little troubles
1
over the Navy without much more ado. Lloyd George squeezing in one direction, and
"Winston in the other. Neither of them wants to go and in an odd sort of way they are
really fond of one another (J. A. Spender and C. Asquith, Life of

Lord Oxford and Asquith,
vol. ii, p. 76). Sir Almeric Fitzroy, Memoirs, March 7, 1914: - In the course of the dinner
-
we had one BirreUism which is worth noting. Winston had said that no day of the session
passed without his having half an hour s talk in the House
of Commons with Lloyd
George, upon which Birrell that case neither of you can be bored" (vol. ii, p. 540).
"In
595
had indeed publicly pledged himself six weeks earlier to resign
rather than accept the reductions in the expenditure of his depart

1
ment which the Cabinet was demanding, and a fortnight before
had the question at a Cabinet meeting and announced
brought up
his determination, if he failed to receive satisfaction, to resign for
a reason the exact reverse of that for which his father Lord Ran
dolph had in 1886. In the end he carried the day. He
resigned
introduced his huge estimates, merely promising reductions in
the following years. The same promises had been made in 1911,
and in a year s time, when the general election had been held, who
could tell which party would be in office? We are indeed sur
prised by the ease
with which he won his victory when we con
trast the outcry raised by the Radical Press for the last two years
with the extreme paucity of his opponents in the House. Only
thirty-five and four
members respectively voted against him at
2
the solitary sitting during which a division was twice taken,
whereas a hundred and ninety Unionists supported a motion
3
demanding a further reinforcement of the British navy.
In a conversation with the German naval attache Prince Louis

of Battenberg spoke of the debt of gratitude which the British
navy owed to Churchill. He had succeeded in extracting a larger
sum from the Chancellor of the Exchequer than any previous
Lord of the Admiralty. 4 How did he do it ? Was it that his personal
friendship with Lloyd George enabled
him to employ persuasion
successfully when another man must have used threats? In 1912
and in 1913 perhaps; but in 1914 he had been compelled to have
recourse to threats. He spoke of resigning followed possibly by
the four Sea Lords. He also hinted at a compromise with the
Unionists on the Irish question, let it be rumoured that he was
contemplating a return to his original allegiance. The Radicals
took fright. The Irish crisis was enough without the further com-
1
Speech at the Mansion House, November 10, 1913.
*
H. of C., March 23, 1914 (Parliamentary Debates, Commons 1914, 5th Series, vol. be,
140 sqq., 143 sqq.).
pp".
3 H. of
C, March 17, 1914 (ibid., vol. lix, pp. 196 sqq.).
4
Report of the naval attache in London, February 6, 1913 (Die Grosse. Politik.. vol.
.
xxxbc, p. 13).
596
THE WEST AND AHMED PEACE
plication
of a revolution at the Admiralty. They gave way and
Churchill remained at his post. He purchased this complaisance
on the question of armaments by again becoming an uncom
promising champion of Home Rule. In short
1
his attitude was
once more what it had been in 1912 and 1913. He had passed over
to the imperialist camp. But on all questions except those of
foreign policy he remained an advanced Liberal of Socialist sym
pathies.
And even in his administration of the Admiralty he gave
pledges to democratic opinion.
In speaking of Admiral Fisher s reforms we made only a brief
mention of the discontent prevalent among the crews of the navy.
2
For that great reformer did very little to allay it. It was not it
would seem about 1906 that is to say, when Fisher had
until
already effected the substance of his

reforms that the discontent
assumed a definite shape, in consequence of the great explosion of
Liberal ideaswhich produced the Radical victory at the election
of 1906 and which that victory in turn intensified. In May 1905
the publication commenced of a weekly paper called The Fleet
edited by Lionel Yexley, a former blue-jacket, which enjoyed a
wide circulation among the sailors, whose claims it championed
with considerable skill. 3 And shortly afterwards their grievances
concise form in a pub
began to be presented annually in more
a
lication composed by sailors and entitled Naval Magna Charta;
An Appeal from the Loiver Deck.
For a long time the Press kept silence about this agitation which
had no direct interest for its regular readers, to whom this exten
sion of syndicalist methods to the navy was repugnant from the
outset. It was however inevitable. Living in these armour-plated
barracks, the under conditions more akin to those

new ironclads,
of a factory than a battleship of the old style and mingling at the
large naval bases
with the civilian proletariat during the long
their vessels were in port the sailors could not escape
periods when
the contagion. The concentration of the squadrons in home waters
1
Winston S. Churchill, The World Crisis, 1911-1914, pp. 177-8.
2
For what was accomplished particularly in improving the conditions of life on board
60 sqq.
see Charles Watney and James A. Little, The Workers Daily Round, 1913, pp. A.^S.
n.s. vol. Ixxix,
Kurd, Progress or Reaction in the Navy (Fortnightly Review, April 1906;
3 work by the same author describing the conditions under which the
See further a
The Inner Life of the Navy. Being an Account of the Inner Social Life led by our
sailors lived.
together wun
Account uj tie -j/j*cw r *,***-
Victual-
board snips
Naval Seamen on ooara of War,
Ships oj war, mgerner with a uciaucu
detailed s^LLuuru of w*c /
Systemsjf
in vogue during the latter Part of the Nineteenth and the opening Years of the
Kn? and Uniform
Twentieth Century, 1908; also Mt
Our Fighting Sea Men, 1911.
597
n accordance with the new policy of the Admiralty increased the
1 was alarmed
Dpportunities of infection, and the Admiralty by
the growing tendency of officers and men to interest politicians
in their demands. A
writer of syndicalist sympathies, Stephen
Reynolds, was probably the first civilian to concern himself with
the conditions of the seamen on the Lower Deck and bring their
grievances to the notice of the public. He began his agitation at
2
the time Churchill went to the Admiralty. The political motives
which induced Churchill to seek popularity by taking up the
question are obvious. But at this particular juncture
he had further
inducements to do so. The Government was increasing the naval
effectives. In a country where conscription was in force nothing
could be easier or cheaper. This was not the case in England. So
long as it was a question of building three ironclads for every two
German or even two for one, England could sustain the struggle.
She possessed the necessary wealth. But it was not so easy to secure
by voluntary enlistment the sailors required to man a fleet con
stantly increasing in size, if the population of the sea-board and
ports looked askance at the service, joined in insufficient numbers
or after joining found that they had made a mistake and sought
to leave the navy as soon as possible.
The sailors complained of the unhealthy conditions in which
they lived, confined as they too often were to narrow, damp, and
ill-ventilated quarters, while the public cherished the poetic pic
ture of Jack Tars buffeted all day by the sea breezes. Though
Fisher hid
begun to improve their conditions and food, complaints
were still And they also complained of the inadequate pay.
raised.
During the sixty years from 1852 to 1912 their pay had risen from
1 *Tbe concentration
of the Fleet in home waters whatever its political advantages may
be has had a most detrimental effect. So long as a ship is on foreign station the very nature
of drcumstances causes a bond of union between officers and men which draws them
closer together. The fact of their all being foreigners in a foreign land creates in itself a
solidarity as nothing else can. With identical interests, sharing one another s work and
play, the officers obtain a moral hold over their men such as is impossible in British ports.
Here the men s minds naturally incline more to their homes and less to their ships; they
are filled with a desire for longer leave and a constant wish to get away to visit their
friends and families is the natural result, which the monotony of service in home waters
but serves to intensify. Here too they are exposed to the wiles of the Socialist agitator,
never backward in working up the molehill of some trumpery grievance into a mountain
natures, now so prevalent in England.* (Trafalgar the Soul of the Navy, National Review,
November 1912, vol. Ix, pp. 448 sqq.).
*
Stephen Rjeynolds, The Lower, Deck. Tlte Navy and the Nation, 1912. For the spirit, at
once revolutionary and patriotic, which inspired his book see the remarkable conclusion
of his preface (p. vu) to which we have already had occasion to refer, p. 412 .
598
is. yd. to
is. 8d. a
day, an increase of 6 per cent. different How
during the same period had been the increase of wages for labour
ers of every description. 1 And when the rise in the cost of
living
during the last sixty years is taken into account it is evident that
the sailors pay had seriously fallen. The men demanded
real
nothing than an increase of 20 per cent. And finally they

less
complained that the discipline was too strict.

It was impossible to turn a deaf ear to these demands at a time
when was prosperous, unemployment at a minimum, and

trade
wages constantly rising and when though the factory had become
a dangerous competitor with the man-of-war the demand for
seamen was steadily increasing. The men did not indeed secure
the increase of a fifth for which they asked. But they obtained an
increase of 3d. a day for able seamen and stokers after six years
2
service, and certain other advantages for seamen of every cate
gory which were equivalent to an increase of pay. And Churchill

let it be understood that he was
trying to obtain further increases
from the Exchequer. It was however the question of discipline
which most occupied the attention of the Admiralty. Already
McKenna had carried a Naval Discipline Bill, 3 which made a
distinction between the disgraceful punishment of imprisonment
to be inflicted on seamen guilty of crimes against the laws of the
land and a new penalty called detention to be inflicted on those
guilty only of infringing regulations. In September 1912 Churchill
carried out a general reform whose character he explained to the
sailors in an official circular. 4 Humiliating forms of punishment
which seemed to treat the sailors more like schoolboys than adults
were abolished, the guard room officers were empowered to in
flict a number of
slight punishments without the formality of
a
report to the Commander, which gave the matter an exaggerated
importance, and sailors who considered themselves unjustly
sentenced were given the right of appeal. Shortly afterwards it
was made impossible to deprive petty officers of their rank with-
1
Royal Navy (Pay) Statement showing the Present and New Rates of Payfor the Royal Navy
and Royal Marines, December 4, 1912.
z H. of C., March Commons vol.
26, 1913 (Parliamentary Debates, 1913, 5th. Series, 1,
p. 1778).
3
9 Edw. 7, Cap. 41 : An Act to enable the punishment of Detention to be substituted for
the punishment of Imprisonment for offences against Naval Discipline under the Naval
Discipline Act (Naval Discipline Act, 1909). It extended to the navy a measure already
adopted for the army in 1906.
4 Circular Letter Naval Annual,
dealing with Naval Discipline, September 7, 1912 (The
1914, pp. 447 sqq.).
599
1
out the sentence of a court martial. These concessions did not
satisfy the sailors who
continued to complain. Neither did they
satisfy the Admiralty,
which elaborated and even introduced ex
certain ships a far-reaching system of reforms
on
perimentally
designed to render discipline on board ship less harsh, and the
2
Sunday rest more real, and to increase the hours off duty.
The sailors or rather the petty officers complained that they
were debarred from the possibility of promotion. And if excep
tionally one of their number became
an officer, he felt uncomfort
able in an alien social sphere in which moreover he could not
keep up his position on his pay. On this point Lord Selborne s

reforms had amounted to very little; 3 a declaration of principle
which had apparently remained a dead letter. As we have seen,
Fisher had approached the problem from another angle and he
was widely criticized for making the navy a more plutocratic
profession than before by increasing
the cost of an officer s train
The need of a sufficient number of officers became more press
ing.
it took seven
ing every year. Since years according to the existing
rules to turnout an officer, only two to build a Dreadnought, it
became urgently necessary to draw officers from a wider class.
Churchill reached the Admiralty at the very moment when it was
awakening to the urgency of the problem and had just adopted a
measure the first of its kind to enable common sailors, among
the marines for a be promoted as officers. 4 He vigorously
start, to
prosecuted the new policy. Not only did he shorten the interval re
5
quired before a midshipman could be made a sub-lieutenant, make it
6
possible for cadets from the public schools to enter the navy directly,
1 Letter of
September 27, 1912 announcing the decision to this effect of the Lords Com
missioners of the Admiralty (The Times, September 28, 1912).
2 For the
experiments conducted on board the cruiser Queen Mary and the question as a
whole see The Times, April 2, 1914.
s
Navy (Personnel) Memorandum dealing with the Entry, Training and Employment of
Officers of the Royal Navy and Royal Marines, December 16, 1902, p. n.
the
*
August 14, 1911. See the article in The Times for February 3, 1914, entitled Officers
for the Navy*.
5
H. of C, March 1 8, 1912. Winston Churchill s speech. Parliamentary Debates, Com
mons 1915, 5th Series, vol. xxxv, p. 1571.)
6
Disregarding the report of a Committee (H. of C., March 26, 1913, Winston Church-
ilFs speech; Parl. Deb., Commons 1913, 5th Ser., vol. 1,
p. 1782). See Navy (Education}
Reports of the Committee appointed to inquire into the Education and Training of Cadets, Mid
shipmen and Junior Officers of His Majesty Fleet, May 18, June 14, September 13, 1912. Also
s
the article in The Times Educational Supplement dealing with these reports April I, 1913,
p. 61. Thirtymight be accepted in this way every year on passing an examination. See
the Admiralty Circular entitled Special Entry of the Naval Cadets in The Times for
March 6, 1913.
6OO
raise the age limit for admission to Osborne, 1 and establish
2
partial scholarships in that college, but he issued two regula
tions on August 5, 1912, the first of which ordered the
selection from the lower ranks of the fleet of a number of men
anxious and suitable for promotion, to serve after two or three
years training as commissioned officers, while the second ordered
all warrant officers whose conduct had been
satisfactory to be
promoted rank of commissioned
after fifteen years service to the
3
warrant remained to solve the more difficult problem of
officer. It
making the social position ofan officer who had risen from the ranks
tolerable. Everything that could be done to solve it by administra
tive measures Churchill did. During the period of training future
lieutenants who had risen from the ranks would receive additional
pay and on promotion as lieutenants a gratuity of 50 to pay for their

^
uniform. The pay of captains, commanders, and lieutenants would
be raised. 4 And for the first time in the history of the British navy
he made an officer from the ranks a Commander on active service. 5
Another liberal and humanitarian reform was the abolition of
the system of prize money announced by Churchill when he intro
duced the estimates of March 1914. The Government did not go
so far as to abolish the right to capture the private property of
enemy subjects on the high seas, as it should have done to con

form to the Declaration of London and give full satisfaction to
the readers of the Manchester Guardian and the Nation. But it
promised that a future naval war would no longer, so far as the
English were concerned, be authorized piracy, and then when
British sailors captured a merchant vessel of the enemy they would
do so, not in their personal interest, but solely on behalfofthe State. 6
The suggestion of a naval holiday put forward by Churchill for
the time in 1912 and twice repeated in 1913 7 was also in
first
spired by pacific intentions. Both fleets, he proposed, the English
1
The Times, August 6, 1912.
2
The Times, November 24, 1913.
3 The Times, August 6, 1912.
Royal Navy (Pay) Statement showing the Present and New Rates of Pay for the Royal Navy
4
and Royal Marines, December 4, 1912, pp. 9-10.

5
Lieutenant Lyne (Stephen Reynolds, The Lower Deck, p. 99).
6
H. of C, March 17, 1914. Winston Churchill s speech, (Parliamentary Debates, Com
mons 1914, 5th Series, vol. lix, p. 1926.; Churchill declared that he was considering the
idea of giving the sailors by way of compensation a special bounty in wartime.
7
H. of C., March 18, 1912 (Introducing the Navy Estimates; ibid., voL xxxv, p. 1557).
H. of C., March 26, 1913 (Introducing the Navy Estimates; ibid., vol.l, p. 175?)- Speech
at Manchester, October 18, 1913.
601
and German should agree to call a years truce to their battle
during which neither would lay down any new capital ships.
Since the British naval programme was more extensive than the
German, how could the German Government object to a plan
which was equally in its own advantage? It objected all the same.
It
pointed out and Churchill was obliged to agree1 that the
example must be followed by other navies, in the first place by
the French and Russian. But they would certainly refuse. France
was extremely hostile to the suggestion of a naval agreement
between England and Germany which would leave the latter
free to increase her army. Germany might therefore have been
well advised to saddle the French and other entente powers with
the responsibility of defeating the suggestion. But in fact she
entertained towards the suggested naval holiday that instinctive
repugnance every powerful nation feels towards any suggestion
of disarmament, even reciprocal. The German attitude therefore
justified the scepticism expressed by the entire British Press with
out distinction of party, and entertained by the Admiralty, the
Foreign Office and Grey, who thought fit to disavow Churchill s
2
proposal publicly after had
it As for Churchill himself it
failed.
is not easy to guess really thought. He was a man of
what he
imaginative temperament, journalist as well as a statesman. And
a
a project of such a journalistic character as the naval
holiday may
perhaps have made a passing appeal to him. But we must bear
3
in mind that in his Memoirs he makes

only the briefest allusion to
his suggestion of 1912 and 1913. Are we to conclude that while
pre
pared to face the risk of succeeding he was indifferent to the pros
pect of failure? Possibly his intentionin making this dramaticmove
was to cajole Lloyd George and the champions of disarmament. 4
1
H. of C., March 26, 1913 (Parliamentary Debates, Commons 1913, 5th Series, vol. 1,
P- 1754).
2
Speech at Manchester,
February 3, 1914: you wish to please foreign nations and to
*If
get on well with them, do unto them as they would be done by. ... It is no good making
to them appeals which they will not welcome and are not
prepared to receive. We have
to bear in mind that in a large
part of the continent of Europe, at any rate in many great
countries of Europe, they sail regard their expenditure on armaments as an internal affair
and resent as an intrusion demands from any foreign country that their
expenditure on
armaments should be open to disarmament or arrangement. Cf. Lord Grey of Fallodon,
Twenty-Five Years, 1892-1916, vol. i, p. 300. But in this work, written after the war, Grey ex
presses much more surprise at the German opposition than he appears tohaveshownin 1913.
s
Prince von Lichnowsky to Bethmann-Hollweg,
April 30, 1913: He is thoroughly in
earnest about the naval holiday and regards it as
undoubtedly practicable. (Die Grosse
Politik . . voL xxxix, p. 38.)
.
4
For the entire episode see, from the German standpoint, Die Grosse Politik . .vol.
.
xxxix, pp. 3 sqq.
602
Among the objections to Churchill s

proposal which the
German Government raised was one we have not yet mentioned.
The Germans feared that under the cover of the proposed naval
holiday the Admiralty intended to strengthen the British fleet by
various underhand methods while pledging themselves not to
strengthen it. Of these devices, these indirect methods, something
must be said if the reader is to understand how the naval struggle
between the two powers continued unabated at the very time
when on both sides of the North Sea there was talk of diplomatic
conciliation and intellectual rapprochement.
The conciliatory formula accepted by Churchill in the spring of
1912 prescribed a 60 per cent superiority for the British fleet (in
Dreadnoughts and Post-Dreadnoughts, of course), a superiority

very little higher than the 50 per cent formula, three ironclads to
two, put forward by Grey at the opening of 1911. It may therefore
surprise us to find him in March 1912 demanding as the indis
pensable condition of maintaining this superiority the con
struction of two to every one German Dreadnought and thus
apparently accepting the formula of two keels to one. But when

we reckon up the number of capital ships laid down from the
construction of thefirst
English Dreadnought begun in 1905, we
find that the English had built thirty Dreadnoughts and Post-
Dreadnoughts as against twenty-one German vessels of the same
type, that is to say the British superiority was slightly below not
the 60 per cent but even the 50 per cent standard. To attain the
level of 60 per cent the pace must be speeded up. England must
therefore build twenty-five large ironclads as against fourteen
German, a ratio of over 17 to 10, almost 18 to 10. But the pro
gramme would involve by 1917 the construction of fifty-five
capital ships since the introduction of
the Dreadnought as against
thirty-five German, a ratio of 15.7 to 10, that is something under

60 per cent. The devices to which Churchill and the Admiralty
had recourse must be sought elsewhere.
One of these was the deliberate omission by the experts of the
British Admiralty when they compared the British and German
naval programmes to take into account the respective speed of
building in both countries. Boast as Germany might of her indus
trial
progress, in the field
of shipbuilding England retained her old
603
superiority. And if Germany had watched with delight the syndi

calist unrest interfere seriously in 191 1 with the work of the Clyde
shipyards, the crisis once passed, England had made up the time
lost. The of the British Admiralty showed, and the
calculations
results were much the same for other vessels, that the Orion had
taken two years and one month to construct, the German Thtirin-
gen three years and three
months. 1 That is to say, the ratio between
the respective speed of British and German naval construction was
two to three. Suppose therefore that in accordance with the rule
formulated in 1912 England laid down, that year four capital
whereas Germany laid down two the four English ships
ships
would be ready in 1914 but not a single German. Nor was this all.
In 1913 and again in 1914 the Admiralty decided to anticipate by
eight months the date at

which the annual quota of ships, three
2
in 1913, two in 1914, should be laid down. This was more time
his utmost
gained in the armament race with Germany. By doing
to speed up by appropriate subsidies the construction of battle
ships and by advancing within the year the date when their
construction began, Churchill sought to hoodwink, if not
at least the general public as to the meaning of the
experts,
official figures.
Another device was to count as equivalent units all the ironclads

In reality improvement had
posterior to the first Dreadnought.
followed improvement until with the construction, of the Orion
begun in 1911 a standard was reached which was known as the
Super-Dreadnought. The speed was the same
but the displace
ment was 23,500 instead of 17,900 tons. The thickness of the main
belt armour was now from twelve to eighteen instead of eleven
inches. The armament consisted of ten guns of a calibre of 13.5
inches (instead often of twelve inches). And if in 1913 England
to eleven German, she had
possessed only fourteen Dreadnoughts
built or in process of construction
twenty Super-Dreadnoughts
as against only twelve German. The advantage was therefore
clearly passing to England.
Even before Churchill s arrival at the
Admiralty plans had been made by which in March 1914 England
would possess twelve capital ships furnished with 13.5 inch guns,
1 H. of
C., February 27, 1912, "Winston Churchill s reply to a question by Robert
Harcourt (Parliamentary Debates, Commons 1912, 5th Series, vol. xxxiv, pp. 1331-2) also
H. of C., March 4, 1912, Churchill s reply to Chiozza Money (ibid., vol. xxxv, p. 173-4)-
2
H. of C., June 1913, Churchill s speech (ibid, Commons 1913, vol. liii, pp. 1043-4);
March 2, 1914, Churchill s speech (ibid., 1914, vol. lix, pp. 90-1).
604
while not a single German ironclad would possess a gun with a
calibre of more than twelve inches. Would the Admiralty at least
be content with the Super-Dreadnought equipped with 13.5 inch
guns and the other ironclads built since 1911 which had already
attained a displacement of twenty-five thousand tons? Many
people believed that the tremendous expense would soon prove

intolerable the latest Super-Dreadnoughts built before 1914 cost
.2,250,000 and that the moment was at hand when the torpedo
boat and submarine would so revolutionize naval warfare as to
render these monster vessels useless. Churchill however trod
faithfully in Fisher s steps and laid down in 1913 in the utmost
secrecy the formidable vessels of the type represented by the Queen
Elizabeth. The cost of construction was .3,000,000. The displace
ment was 27,500 tons; the speed twenty-five instead oftwenty-one
knots. There were only eight large guns, but they had a calibre of
fifteen inches and were able to fire at a single target and over a dis
tance ofeleven miles a charge of seven tons, an increase ofabout a ton
over the charge which the Orion s ten guns of 13. 5 inches could fire.
Evidently in the construction of these monsters the Admiralty
was not sacrificing speed to the size of the vessel or its armament.
The reason was that all the new
English Dreadnoughts were
driven size the use of petrol enor
Given equality of
by petrol.
mously enhanced the vessel s speed, made it far easier to reach full
sea a far speedier process, and
speed, and refuelling on the open
one requiring fewer hands. The amount of energy derived from
petrol was 40 per cent greater than that derived from the same
weight of coal. How were the necessary supplies of petrol to be
insured? And how was the Government to overcome the oppo
sition of those powerful private interests at home whose profit
demanded that the British navy should use coal fuel? And what
could be done to prevent the State as a consumer of petrol being
held to ransom by the Societies which had a monopoly of the
wells? Churchill hit upon the daring plan of making the British
Government joint owner of the wells in Southern Persia. He had
many difficulties to surmount, deep-rooted prejudices against
State ownership, and the suspicion at a juncture when the Marconi
scandal was before the public, of a personal interest in the under
1
taking. Backed however by the report
of a parliamentary com-
1 His real motive however was to free the
Admiralty from the pressure of the great oil
the political
companies in Mexico and even in the British colony of Trinidad. Moreover,
605
mittee of which he had dared to make Lord Fisher chairman he
won thus obtaining possession of considerable
the victory. By
supplies of petroleum the British State assured her supremacy at
sea when that supremacy had become more than ever necessary
to protect her free communications with the Persian coast. 1
10
Moreover, all these calculations were concerned exclusively

with Dreadnoughts and Post-Dreadnoughts. For the Admiralty
had for the reasons given above adopted that principle in its calcu
lation. But were these reasons so decisive as they were said to be?
It is true that ironclads of the
pre-Dreadnought types were being
superseded and that in consequence of the dramatic innovation
constituted by the advent of the Dreadnought it was wise to look
forward to the day when they would disappear altogether. But
it had not
yet arrived. In 1914 England would possess fifty-eight
battleships less than
twenty years old as against only thirty-five
German, and when we compare the battleships of pre-Dread
nought type, England s superiority was overwhelming. There
were two ships of the Lord Nelson type of 16,500 tons built
immediately before the Dreadnoughts and so closely akin
to the latter that satisticians could reckon or refuse to reckon
them as such, as they wished to prove the strength or the
weakness of the British navy. There were eight ships of the King
Edward type of 16,350 tons, eight of the Formidable type of 15,000,
six of the Canopus type of 12,950 and nine of the
Majestic type of
14,900 tons. To all these Germany could oppose from the pre-
of the Mexican company created diplomatic difficulties with the United States
activities
(seeBurton J. Hendrick, The Life and Letters of Walter.H- Page, vol. i, pp. 175 sqq.). And
one of its chief shareholders was Lord Murray, one of the politicians involved in the
Marconi affair. See the debates H. of C M July 17, 1913 (Parliamentary Debates* Commons
1913, 5th Series, vol. Ivi, pp. 1477, 1561 sqq.).
1
4 & 5 Geo. 5, Cap. 37: An Act to provide Money for the purpose of the Acquisition
of Share or Loan Capital of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company Limited (Anglo-Persian Oil
Company [Acquisition of Capital] Act, 1914). By its provisions a sum of 2,200,000 was
placed at the disposal of the Treasury and added to the Consolidated Fund. For the BUI
see die important dehate in the House of Commons on June 17, 1914
(Parl. Deb.,
Commons 1914, 5th Sen, vol. Ixiii, pp. 1131 sqq.). One of the difficulties involved in the
substitution of oil for coal in the navy was to placate the coal
industry. The Government
therefore explained that they intended to conduct experiments in the extraction of
petrol
from coal See on the question, Navy (Oil Fuel) Agreement with the Anglo-Persian Oil
Company Limited* 1914, p 5.
606
Dreadnought era only twenty-two ironclads not one of which

exceeded 13,000 tons, and which included two old-fashioned
little ironclads of the Hagen type which displaced no more than
1
4 ooo.
5
If we
take further points of comparison and consider the old
cruisers, whose type was obsolete but which were still capable of
active service, and the light cruisers British superiority was more
than double.
2
And
the British advantage in submarines both al
3
ready built and in course of construction was more than double.
In 1912 the Admiralty asked Parliament to vote the sums required
to maintain a personnel of 137,500 as against the 66,700 sailors of
the German fleet. Here again the proportion was more than
double and the Admiralty and Churchill were determined to
maintain by a progressive increase which would produce in 1920
a total of 230,000 seamen, a ratio far removed from that ratio of
60 per cent with which they professed to be content.
We must add that in her dockyards England was building not
only for her own needs but for those of foreign countries. In the
eventof war it would be easy to commandeer vessels originally
destined to fight under a foreign flag which could be transformed

in the twinkling of an eye into British men-of-war. In July 1914
four large vessels of respectively 23,000, 27,500, 26,200, and
28,000 tons were being built in British dockyards two for
4
Turkey, and two for Chile. That is to say, there were four Super-
Dreadnoughts which the Admiralty knew were at its disposal
which had never formed part of any programme of naval con-
1
Fleets (Great Britain and Foreign Countries) Return Showing the Fleets of Great Britain,
France, Russia, Germany, Italy, Austria-Hungary, United States of America and Japan,
on the
1st day ofJanuary, 1914, omitting Battleships, Battle Cruisers and Cruisers, over twenty years old
Cruisers and
from date of launch and distinguishing, both built and building, Battleships, Battle
Cruisers, Light Cruisers, Torpedo Vessels, Torpedo Boat Destroyers, Torpedo Boats and Submar
ines: Return to show Date of Launch, Date of Completion, Displacement, Horse-Power, and
Armaments reduced to a Common Scale. Admiralty, February 1914. The publication which
began in 1896 and had been annual since 1911 was generally
known as the Dickinson
Return. Churchill himself warned Germany that England would be satisfied with a
as the pre-Dreadnoughts remained
superiority of 60 per cent in Dreadnoughts, only so long
in commission. (H. of C., March 18, 1912; Parliamentary Debates, Commons 1912, 5th
Series, voL xxxv, p. 1556.)
*
Cruisers of an old type: 40 British to 9 German. Light Cruisers already finished: 60
British to 43 German, under construction 19 British to 6 German.
8
Submarines already built: 69 British to 24 German: under construction 27 British to
14 German.
*The Russian Government wanted to purchase the two Chilean ironclads, but the
Government of Chile refused, pointing out that the British Admiralty possessed a right
of pre-emption. (The Russian naval attache* in London, to the Chief of Staff of the Russian
navy; Gra Benckendorff *s Diplowaf&rfeer Briefwcchsel, voL iii, p. 281.)
607
struction or been counted in any comparison between the German
and British navies. Add to this the powerful reserve which the
s immense mercantile
Admiralty possessed in England marine,
large vessels easily transformed into auxiliary cruisers or trans
ports, small vessels
which could be employed in a great variety of
ways of the coast. When Germany devoted the
for the defence
new fleet of which she was so proud to a single purpose, to harass
England on the seas where admittedly she could not hope to wrest
the supremacy from her, she could not have committed herself
to a more ungrateful and futile task.
ii
Nevertheless, she succeeded in harassing England and the latter

to make her position still more secure sought additional strength
beyond her borders. She called upon her Colonies for assistance.
And she transformed or was preparing to transform her diplo
matic ententes with France and Russia into naval agreements.
We have already seen how from the date when the first of the
Imperial Conferences met, one of the principal aims of the British
Government which summoned them was to obtain from the Self-
Governing Dominions a contribution, direct or indirect, to im
perial defence. As time went on and the German fleet grew the
appeal from the Home Government became more pressing. In
1909 a special conference had been summoned devoted exclusively
to studying military and naval problems. 1 The aim the Admiralty
had in view was clearly explained in the official note which
wound up the proceedings of the Conference. The common in
terest of all parts of the Empire demanded a single fleet under a
single command with identical training and discipline for all its
crews. All that required to be settled was the proportion in which
each colony should contribute to the support and expansion of
the British navy.
Butwas necessary to take account of the sentiments of local
it
patriotism which had grown up in the Colonies and the desire of

every colony to possess a fleet of its own. For a long time Australia
1
The were private and no reports were published. For the conclusions
discussions
reached see Asquith statement H. of C., August 26, 1909 (Parliamentary Debates, Com
s
mons 1909, 5th Series, vol. ix, pp. 2310 sqq.).
608
had cherished an programme on this point, to which the
explicit
Imperial Conference of 1903 had made concessions. A compro
mise suggested by The Times, by which Australia and New Zealand
would undertake to defray the cost of building and maintaining
a special squadron which would be the imperial squadron in the
Indian Ocean and the Pacific, met with scant success. New Zea
land alone formally promised to pay for the construction of a
Dreadnought to be placed at the disposal of England for the pur
poses of imperial defence on condition that England promised in
return to send New Zealand a certain number of light vessels for
the defence of her shores. Australia would pay the cost of another
Dreadnought but it was to form part of the Australian fleet.
Canada was even more refractory and the sole result of the con
ference was to draw up a programme of naval construction as
unambitious as possible. A small navy, strictly local, would be
built to be divided between the Atlantic and Pacific coasts and
amounting only to five light cruisers and six torpedo boat des
troyers, and even this extremely modest programme remained- on
paper.
The Conference of 1911 brought the question no further. The
utmost the mother country could obtain from her Self-Governing
Colonies after lengthy discussions, and when the principle had
been admitted that the naval forces of the dominions of Canada
and Australia would be subject only to the direction of their res
5
pective Governments was that the regulations governing the

training and discipline of the crews should be identical with those
in force in the mother country, that the officers and men should
be interchangeable and that *in time of war, when the fleets of
the dominions, in whole or in part, should have been placed under
the authority of the Impend Government, the vessels would
make an integral part of the British fleet and would remain under
the direction of the British Admiralty for the whole duration of
1
hostilities . But in 1912, when Churchill was at the Admiralty, it
seemed as though the mother country would succeed at last. The
Admiralty had secured from the native chiefs of Malaya the gift
of an ironclad. And at the General Election in Canada the Con
servative party, tinder Borden, defeated Laurier and his Liberal
followers. Its programme, frankly imperialist, involved the con-
1
Imperial Conference 1911. Dominions No, 9. Papers laid before the Imperial Conference:
Naval and Military Defence, p. 2. Resolutions, I, 2, and 19.
6Op
struction of a genuine navy including three battle cruisers of the
most modern type.
What use would the Admiralty make of these ironclads or
two important speeches he delivered in the
battle cruisers? In the
House of Commons in March 1913 and in March 1914 to present
the navy estimates, Churchill pointed out that the real danger to
which the Self-Governing Colonies of America and Australasia
were exposed lay in European waters. If England perished, their
safety perished with her. He therefore urged the formation of an
Imperial Squadron with its base at Gibraltar which should cruise
freely about the British Empire, visiting the various Dominions,
and showing itself ready to operate at any threatened point at
home or abroad 1 It would consist of the Malaya, the New Zea
.
land and the three battle cruisers which Canada proposed to build.
But Churchill did not despair of witnessing the day when Australia
would make her contribution to it. What
good purpose could be
servedby the Dreadnought for which she had decided to pay
and which was launched in the summer of 1913, if it remained
in Australian waters? It would serve only to flatter Australian
vanity. The defence of the coast could be performed equally well

by cruisers, torpedo boats, and submarines. And might we not
hope that the latest addition to the Dominions, South Africa her
self, would one day take her part, when the reconciliation between
the two races who had colonized her had been completed, in the
perils and glory of the Empire?
This ambitious project disturbed naval experts in Germany.
Was this the
meaning of the proposals made by Churchill in the
House of Commons, and Lord Haldane at Berlin? They had
spoken of eight English squadrons to five German, and of a
superiority of 60 per cent in Dreadnoughts. Now it was explained
that the formula as interpreted by England referred only to the
seas of Northern
Europe, and excluded the battleships contributed
2
by the Empire. In 1913 and die three following years the British
Empire would lay down four ships of the line, the Malaya and the
three Canadian battle cruisers, over and above the
twenty-one
wkose construction had been officially announced. Six capital
1 H. of Q, March 26, 1913 (Parliamentary Debates, Commons 1913, 5th Series, vol. 1,
pp. 1760-3); March 17, 1914 (ibid, 1914, 5th Ser., vol. lix, pp. 1933-5).
*
Despatch from the Capitain de fregate de Saint-Seine, French naval attach^ in London,
quoted by Lieutenant-Colonel de La Panouse, military attache" in a letter to Millerand,
Minister for War, June 24, 1913 (Documents diplomatique* fran
fai$, 30 Se*rie, vol. iii, p. 164)
.
610
ships wouldthus be built in 1913 to three German, five to two

in 1914 and 1915, five to three in 1916 and four to two in 1917.
That is to say, during the six years from 1912 to 1917 England
would build twenty-nine ships instead of twenty-five as against
fourteen German more than double. Germany had good reason
to declare herself duped.
Her anxiety was dispelled by a new revolt of local patriotism.
In 1913 Borden was unable to obtain the consent of die Ottawa
Parliament to the first instalment of his naval programme and
though he expressed his intention to persist with his plan and fight
the Liberal opposition, he was not very likely to find future con
ditions more favourable than on the morrow of his triumph at
the polls in 1912. In Australia the Ministry of Defence protested
that Churchill s plan amounted to a repudiation of the agreement
of 1909. The Dreadnought had been built as part of an exclusively
Australian fleet. If the First Lord of the Admiralty was right in
suggesting that vessels of this type were useless in the Pacific,
Australia ought not to build them. Even loyal New Zealand com
plained. England, while incorporating the New

Zealand in her
imperial navy, had not given her colony the two light cruisers
and
the submarines she had promised in 1909. If she did not keep her
promise within a year New Zealand would build a cruiser at her
own but it would be stationed in home waters. In short,
cost,
England must content herself, for the present at least, with only
two vessels to reinforce her imperial navy, the New Zealand and
the Malaya. Churchill, disappointed in this direction, was driven
back upon the expedient of which we have already spoken to
advance the date every year when the construction of the new
vessels was put in hand.
12
There were indeed imperialists to whom it was repugnant to

depend upon the colonies for the security of the United Kingdom.
How much more it must have been to them to see
repugnant
England seeking help, not from these young nations who were
after all British, but from foreign nations so lately her military
and naval rivals.
The Admiralty no doubt acted prudently when they allied them

selves with the French navy against the German. For Germany
611
dominated the Triple Alliance. In obedience to her instructions,
Austria was beginning to build Dreadnoughts and these could
a calculation of the forces
hardly be left out of account in
Germany could employ against England in the event of war. Italy
was also building them and though the Italian fleet was probably
intended to combat Austria rather than her enemies, and though
it was most unlikely that Italy would ever take part against
England in a naval war between Austria and the latter, the fact
remained that Italy like Austria was Germany s ally. England
must therefore put forward a still greater effort or trust to France
to guard the Mediterranean. The surprising thing is indeed that
the Admiralty waited till 1911 before deciding upon a naval
understanding with France, though the two armies had been
collaborating for the past five years. The explanation is that the
British army, taught humility by the disillusionments of the Boer
War, was forced to admit that although the German army was
far stronger than the French, the British had much to learn from
the latter, whereas the contempt for the French navy entertained
for many years by the British prevented the latter from entertain
ing the idea of concerted action. The Agadir crisis in August 1911
brought home to the British Government the danger involved by
this attitude of haughty
o j isolation adopted by
j
the Admiralty.
j
When Churchill succeeded McKenna he determined to inaugur

ate a new
policy. A month had not passed before the English
authorities overtures to the French naval attache, 1 and since
made
the French Government soon passed into the control of a states
man who, reversing his predecessor s policy, was anxious to
tighten the entente with England, the understanding between the
two armies was soon completed by an understanding between the
two navies.
When he introduced the navy estimates on March 18, 1912,
Churchill announced his intention to redistribute the squadrons
charged with the defence of the United Kingdom^ In future
there would be three fleets
comprising in all eight squadrons of
The
eight battleships each. first of these, four battle
squadrons of
Dreadnoughts, would be kept permanently on active service,
1
Capitain de fregate Le Gouz de Saint-Seine, naval attache" in London, to Delcasse",
Minister of Marine, December n, 1911 (Documents

diplomaiiquesfrangais, se Se*rie, vol. i,
p. 328).
1
H. of C., March 18, 1912 (Parliamentary Debates, Commons 1912, 5th Series, voL
3DDCV, pp. 1564 sqq.).
6l2
ready for action without any previous mobilization. The second

consisting of two squadrons, also on active service, would never
theless be obliged in the event of war to visit the bases of its units
to obtain supplementary crews. The third, also of two
consisting
squadrons, would be a reserve fleet, but a special reserve would be
formed to man it, the immediate reserve which could be called
,
up in advance of a general mnhil.J7g.tTon.

These measures were a direct reply to the new German naval
law. Germany was increasing the number of her
permanently
mobilized ships. England would follow suit. But to form the
first fleet the Atlantic fleet must be withdrawn from its base at
Gibraltar for which English

ports would be substituted. The
Mediterranean fleet now the fourth fleet, would take its
,
place
at Gibraltar,
leaving the Mediterranean without English capital
ships. The step intensified the concentration of the British navy,
which in response to the pressure of the German navy was with
drawing it from the extremities to the centre of the Empire. Did
this mean that British interests in the Mediterranean would be
left
unprotected? Or would England count upon the French fleet
to protect thecommon interests of the entente! Was not the pur
pose of Asquith s visit to Malta in
May to discuss this, question
with Fisher, who came from his Italian villa, and Kitchener, who
came from Egypt to meet him? Were not the journalists who at
this moment were
advocating the transformation of the entente
into an alliance in the councils of the Foreign Office and the
Admiralty? What truth was there in the rumour, current in

August, of negotiations between England and France for a naval
entente? The answer to these questions seemed to have been
given
in September when it was announced that six ironclads of the
third French squadron had been transferred from Brest to Toulon
to form, together with the vessels already stationed in the latter
port, a single fleet of eighteen ironclads and six armoured cruisers.
It was not a
powerful fleet; there were no Dreadnoughts. But it
was sufficiently strong to counterbalance the combined fleets of
Austria and Italy, supposing the latter were allied, for like France
neither of these powers had as yet completed a Dreadnought.
Thus France assumed before the whole world the task ofprotecting
against possible attacks by the allies of Germany the route to India
between Gibraltar and Port Said, now stripped of English capital
ships. On the other hand England made herself responsible for the
613
defence of the French coast on the North Sea, the Channel, and
even the Atlantic, henceforward devoid of French ironclads.
Rumour had spoken the truth; a naval convention was being
negotiated between the two Powers. Negotiations had in fact
been begun at the beginning of September 1911 to prepare for
the danger which many regarded as imminent, of war between
the three Western Powers and a verbal agreement had been
reached as to the respective spheres of action to be allotted to the
1
British and French fleets in the event of hostilities. They were
revived on the basis of the new distribution of the British squad
rons in July 1912. At first Churchill, not to commit the Foreign
Office, asked for an explicit declaration in the preamble that the
agreement should be operative only if Great Britain and France
were actually engaged in conducting a joint war and should not
restrictthe political freedom of each Government to participate
or not to participate in such a war. 2 When the technical agree
ments were concluded in January and February 1913 they bound
the contracting parties only to take the necessary steps for co
operation in the Mediterranean or elsewhere in the event of a
war in which Great Britain and France are allied against the Triple
4
Alliance and to defend the Straits of Dover and the Channel in

the event of being allied with the French Government in a war
with Germany . was onto
these naval negotiations that Paul
It
Cambon grafted the diplomatic negotiations which ended in the

exchange of notes in October. Thus little more than a year after
Agadir the diplomatic entente was committed for the first time
to writing, the military understanding ratified for the first time
by the Cabinet and, most significant of all, the diplomatic and
military agreements completed by a naval agreement.
The naval agreement was and remained secret, but the new
distribution of the British and French fleets could not be con
cealed and it caused considerable dissatisfaction in England.
Churchill was attacked by a formidable combination of critics.
1
Capitaan dc fregate Le Gouz de Saint-Seine to Delcasse*, Minister of Marine, July 10,
1912 (Documents diplomatique* Jranfds, 30 Serie, voL iii, pp. 235-6. Cf. vol. i, p. 328 .).
1
Capitain dc fregate Le Gouz de Saint-Seine to Delcasse, July 10 and 18 (Documents
dtplomatiquesfrattfois, 3e Scrie, voL iii, pp. 235, 270). Delcasse" to Poincare, September 17,
1912, letter enclosing a preliminary draft of a naval convention with, notes (ibid., pp. 506
sqq.); Paul Cambon to Poincare*, September 19, 1912 (ibid., pp. 523 sqq.), Poincar to
Paul Cambon, September 20, 1912 (ibid., p. 530), Capitain de fregate Le Gouz de Saint-
Seine to Vice-AdTmral Aubert, September 21, 1912 (ibid., p. 546). (Documents diplomtt-
tupesfranpis, voL v, pp. 486, 490.)
614
The imperialists disliked entrusting the Mediterranean commu
1
nications of the Empire to the protection of a foreign Power.
The pacifists objected to the British fleet taking charge of the
French coast of the Channel as involving the subordination of
British policy to the French Foreign Office. To disarm his critics
Churchill promised in July 1912 to send to Malta four cruisers of
the Invincible type to compensate for the departure of the fourth
fleet, transferred a month before to Gibraltar. And it was no doubt
to dispel the same misgivings that a little later he contemplated
the formation of an imperial squadron, with its base at Gibraltar,
which would release five Dreadnoughts for the Mediterranean.
When the project failed, he despatched to the Mediterranean in
November ipis 2 a division of the first squadron, four Dread
noughts, and a division of the third squadron of cruisers, four
largearmoured cruisers, to take part in joint manoeuvres with the
Mediterranean fleet. Finally, on March 17, 1914, when he intro
duced the annual navy estimates he explained that the acceleration
effected in building the three Super-Dreadnoughts laid down in
1913-14 would enable the Admiralty by the end of 1915 to send
to Malta a squadron of eight battleships, of which at least six
would be Dreadnoughts to replace the four battle cruisers sta
tioned there in I9I2. 3 The imperialists were satisfied; British pres
tige in the Mediterranean was secure. But nothing had been done
to reassure the pacifists, the opponents of any intervention in a
European war. The defence of the north coast of France was in
fact entrusted to the British fleet, and so great was the naval weak
ness of France, that just because it
obliged her to entrust her safety
to British aid, it was her surest guarantee that that aid would not
be withheld.
13
When the negotiations for a naval convention between England

and France opened in July 1912, a naval convention between
France and Russia had just been concluded. France adopted a
1
See Lord Esher s essay entitled Naval and Military Situation* in his book, The In
fluence of King Edward and Other Essays, 1915. At the Malta Conference in May 1912,
Kitchener had expressed himself strongly against abandoning the Mediterranean to the
French fleet. (Sir George Arthur, Life of Lord Kitchener, 1020, vol. ii, p. 336.)
2
H. of C., July 22, 1914 (Parliamentary Debates, Commons 1914; 5th Scries, vol. xli,
P- 855).
3
H. of C., March 17, 1914 (ibid., 1912, 5th Ser., vol. lix, p. 1929).
615
programme of naval which would at last give her

construction
Dreadnoughts and produce by 1920 a fleet of twenty-eight large
ironclads. The Russian Government, confident that it had over
come the danger of revolution, was actively engaged in creating
a new navy, since her old navy had been practically annihilated
by Japan. Four Super-Dreadnoughts had already been launched

and the Duma had just sanctioned the construction of three more
large ironclads and four battle cruisers. The German Government
hoped, it would seem, to alarm England by calling her attention
to the danger she might one day incur from these French and
Russian armaments. In 1914 Tirpitz was careful not even to allude
to the naval power of Britain and to justify the naval expenditure
of his country as her inevitable reply to the expenditure of France
and Russia. England however did not regard with disfavour the
understanding between the Russian and French navies and the
reinforcement of both. If Germany were challenged in the Baltic,
France stronger in the Mediterranean, England would be freer to
meet the German menace in the North Sea. When, therefore, in
April 1914, King George visited Paris,
accompanied by Grey,
whose presence invested the visit with an exceptional importance,1
the French Prime Minister, at the suggestion of the Czar, asked
the English Government to empower the Admiralty to negotiate
with the Russian naval authorities an agreement similar to that
concluded between France and Russia in 1912, and between
France and England in 1913. Grey, whom the Czar had
already
2
approached directly, made no objection.
Conversations took place in London at the beginning of May
between Grey, Benckendorff, Paul Cambon, and Isvolsky, who
had come from Paris for the purpose. Subsequently Grey would
seem to have followed the procedure he had inaugurated in 1906
and left the Admiralty a free hand to conduct negotiations in
1
Valuable information about this visit will be found in the Austrian diplomatic docu
ments. Despatch from their councillor to the legation Count Karl TrauttmansdorfF, Lon
don, April 24, 1914. Report from the Ambassador MensdorfF, May 8, 1914; Osterreich-
Ungams Aussenpolitik . . vol. vii, p. 1085; vol. viii, pp. 21-2. With the approval of the
.
Foreign Office The Times invited the French historian Ernest Lavisse to write an article on
the occasion of the King s visit celebrating the entente cordiale which this
very month of
April had reached its tenth anniversary. But when The Times asked Arthur Balfour, the
Prime Minister of 1909 and Lord Lansdowne his Foreign Secretary to supplement the
French by an English article, they refused, disapproving it would seem of the excessive
importance which The Times and, indirectly, the Foreign Office attributed to the royal
visit. (H. Wickham Steed,
Through Thirty Years, vol. i, pp. 388 sqq.)
*
For the conversation on April 3 between the Czar and Sir
George Buchanan see Sir
George Buchanan, My Mission to Russia, vol. i, p. 183.
616
which frorrrthat moment he took no further part. 1 When indis
cretions were committed at Petersburg, the German Press de
nounced these suspicious conversations, the Radical Press took
alarm and a question was asked in Parliament. Grey gave the
stereotyped answer: If war arose between European powers,
there were no unpublished agreements which would restrict or
hamper the freedom of the Government or of Parliament to de
cide whether or not Great Britain should participate in a war.
That answer remains as true to-day as it was a year ago. No
. . .
negotiations have since been

concluded with any Power that
would make the statement No
such negotiations are in
less true.
progress, and
none are likely to be entered upon, so far as I can
in the reply which was not literally
judge. There was not word
2 a
true. The accuracy of the semi-official statement published in the
Westminster Gazette that there is no naval agreement, nor any
a view to a naval agreement, between Great
negotiations with
Britain and Russia
3
was more dubious. The statement was cer
,
meant that in consequence of the awkward revela

tainly true, if it
tions the negotiations had been suspended. At the moment when
the article in the Westminster Gazette appeared they were not in
progress.
But it had been decided it would seem that they should
be renewed in August under conditions of greater secrecy when
Prince Louis of Battenberg, at once a Prince of the blood royal
4
and a Sea Lord, was expected to visit Petersburg.
British policy during the two years preceding the war was
marked by curious inconsistencies. the one hand the Govern On
ment wished to remain free, and perhaps genuinely believed itself
free,to intervene or not to intervene in an eventual war. To pre
serve this liberty it had attempted a policy of rapprochement with
with the ententes with
Germany, which it regarded as consistent
1 Lord Grey of Fallodon, Twenty-Five Years, vol. i, pp. 284-5.
s
HL of C.June II, 1914 (Parliamentary Debates, Commons 1914, 5th Series, vol. bdii,
P- 458).
Westminster Gazette, June 13, 1914- ,
..
* Count Benckendorflto Sazonov, May 20, June 2, 1914 (Un Livre Nozr, vol. u, pp. 324
Russian naval attache in London, May 24, June
sqq.}. Secret report by Captain WolkorT,
Ed. 1928, vol. pp. 281-2)
(Graf BenckendorfTs Diplomatischer Briefwechsel,
iii,
6, 1914.
Count BenckendorfT to Sazonov, May 29, June II, 1914 (Un Livre No/r, vol. ii, p. 326,
Der diplomatische Briefwechsel Iswolskys, vol. iv, p. 133)- Count Benckendorff to Sazonov,
Ed. 1928, vol. in,
June 19, July 2, 1914 (Graf Ben ckendorfFs Diplomatischer Briefwechsel
to Sir George Buchanan of June 25, 1914 is not
pp. 281-2). Sir Edward Grey despatch
s
the report that a
the denial which it appears at first sight. Grey simply protests against
convention had been actually concluded and that it comprised an agreement on the ques
tion of the Dardanelles. (British Documents . . . vol. xi, p. 6.)
France and Russia. On the other hand it strengthened the defences
of the Empire, and with this object sought to achieve a closer co
operation with the Colonies, France, and Russia, measures which
had no meaning apart from the eventuality of an armed struggle
between England and Germany. But the paradox of this double-
edged policy did but accentuate, say if you like caricature, the
paradox of that European system it had become customary to
term armed peace.
.
To confine ourselves to the two rival nations with which we
are particularly concerned here, we observe that the military and
naval expenditure of Great Britain had more than doubled be
tween 1895, the year in which the imperialists came into power
and 1913 when the Liberals had held office for eight years. In
Germany during the same period they had been quadrupled and
on the eve of the Great War exceeded the British figure by
.21,000,000, more than a fifth. In an extremely pessimistic
speech in which, while calling attention to the evil he avowed
himself at a loss for a remedy, Lloyd
George estimated at
.40,000,000 the annual increase in the world s expenditure on
armaments.. It is not surprising that this ruinous competition
terrified those who retained sufficient
independence of judgment
not to be swept away by the tide. In the United States the head
of the Government, President Wilson, who in consequence of the
geographical position of his country could adopt towards the
affairs of
Europe the attitude of an impartial umpire, took alarm.
When at the close of 1913 Sir William Tyrell, Grey s private
secretary, visitedWashington to discuss grave questions outstand
ing between England and the United States, which he settled to
the satisfaction of both countries, the
suggestion took shape of an
unofficial mission to be undertaken by Colonel House to the rulers
of the great European Powers with the
object of devising some
safeguard against the danger of war. An alliance between England
and the United States, an alliance between
England, the United
States, and Germany, an organized entente of all the great Powers,
were- the various projects which entertained the dreams of
Anglo-
Saxon politicians and formed the subject of their confidential dis
cussions until late in July, at the
very time when the British
Admiralty was negotiating or preparing to negotiate with Russia.
1
1
The Intimate Papers oj Colonel House
arranged as a Narrative by Colonel Seymour,
vol. i, pp. 266 sqq. See especially for the rigorous secrecy with which the conversations
618
But by the end of May, Colonel House had lost heart. situa "The
tion is extraordinary, he wrote from Berlin. It is militarism run

stark mad. Unless someone acting for
you can bring about a
different understanding, there is some
day to be an awful cata
clysm. No one in Europe can do it. There is too much hatred, too
1
many jealousies/ Nevertheless, if we consider only the Western
nations of Europe it is
by no means so clear that the imminent
war was the natural consequence of the
system of armed peace,
as it had been in operation for many years past.
The cost was ruinous. But can one purchase too dearly the
blessings of peace? And many competent thinkers regarded a
democratic system which enfranchised the masses and imposed
military service on the wealthy as favourable to peace and stable
international relations. In support of their contention they could
appeal to the fact that the host of diplomatic conflicts, between
England and France, England and Germany, and France and Ger
many, which during the last forty years had seemed to place the
nations on the brink of armed conflict, had never led to war. One
of the two parties had given way or a compromise load been
arranged. Bloodshed had been avoided. Why should it be differ
ent in 1913 or 1914? There was no issue likely to provoke a direct
conflict between England and Germany. War between the two
countries could arise only from a war between Germany and a
third Power. From a war with France? What matter of dispute
between the two nations could be foreseen, sufficiently serious to
lead to war? Morocco ? A considerable section of German opinion
had not renounced the hope that Germany would regain a footing
in that country. But the German Government would certainly
not be so foolish as to strengthen the entente between France and
England by another Tangier or Agadir at a time when its
chief
anxiety was to consolidate its

position in Europe by allaying
British mistrust. Alsace? The issue had been revived in some
quarters both in Paris

and in Alsace itself. But what French
Cabinet would undertake the responsibility of a war of revenge?
The politiciansknew that nothing was more remote from the
were conducted House s conversation with Tyrell: Tyrell brought word to me to-day
that Sir Edward he did not wish to send anything official or in writing, for fear of
said
in the event it should become known. He
offending French and Russian sensibilities
be done informally and unofficially.
thought that it was one of those things that had best
vol. i, p. 27?-)
(Colonel House to President Wilson July 3, 1914;
1
The Intimate Papers of Colonel House, vol. i, p. 255. Cf. Burton J. Hendnck, The Life
and Letters of Walter H. Page, vol. i, pp. 270 sqq.
619
fear of a German
thoughts of the country as a whole, and it was
attack not the desire to undertake a war of aggression which had
won the nation s consent to a reinforcement of the army.
They
also knew that France unaided was too weak to war with sustain a
Germany and that they could not count on British aid in a war of
this kind. Indeed, they were aware that to raise the question of
Alsace would be the surest way to alienate British sympathies. In
pontifical tones The Times, an organ by

no means unfriendly to
France, had solemnly warned the French against the consequences
of such imprudence. If the French people cannot help thinking
of it, they should bear Gambetta s counsel in mind, and keep
1
their thoughts to themselves/
If,nevertheless, the danger of war became serious about the
beginning of 1914, it was for reasons, though many Frenchmen

and Englishmen were not aware of the fact, which had nothing
to do with problems of western politics. It was the result of a
sudden change in the relations between Germany and Russia. In
spite of the Franco-Russian alliance, the -rapprochement between
Russia and England, and the formation of the Triple Entente they
were as we have seen still good, when the storm kindled by the
episode of Bosnia had blown over, and continued to be good until
after Agadir. They suddenly became very bad at the close of 1912
and the German Staff could never have wrested from the Govern
ment and the Reichstag the army law of 1913, which made the
European war inevitable, if the diplomatic situation in Eastern
Europe had not aroused with good reason a host of new anxieties
in Berlin. Was the Russian or the German Government
respon
sible for these new risks of war? The Governments themselves
still desired peace. Not individuals or governments but the col

lective passions of the masses must bear the responsibility. In their
own despite the Governments were pushed forward by their sub
To understand the chain of events which
jects irresistible pressure.
led England on August 4, 1914, to declare war on Germany we
must acquaint ourselves with the nature and origins of these
currents of popular
feeling which from Asia to the Balkans, from
the Balkans to the southern frontier of
Germany, swept onward
from struggle to struggle, from one national revolution to another
until they had
submerged the West in the deluge of war.
1
March 3, 1913.
620
THE EAST AND PRINCIPLE OF NATIONALITY
H THE EAST AND THE PRINCIPLE OF NATIONALITY
We have already had occasion at the beginning of this volume

to comment upon the important part in human history played by
the victory ofJapan over Russia in 1905. It was an example to the
whole of Asia, indeed to all those races which Europe had bran
ded permanently inferior. There was however a fundamental
as
distinction between Japan and the other Asiatic civilizations.
Under its theocratic and feudal monarchy Japan had success
fully resisted all the attempts of the Western Powers to establish
themselves in her territory. Elsewhere the situation was com
different. Everywhere else the native monarchies and aris
pletely
tocracies had been conquered or corrupted and had allowed their
dominions to be more or less completely annexed. If, therefore,
the Asiatic peoples were to throw off the yoke of the West, their
liberation must begin by a revolt against their own Governments
and the watchword of revolt had been taught by the West. In
the "nineteenth century the principle of nationality had changed
the face of Europe. That principle demanded that national inde
democratic
pendence should be achieved by political autonomy,
and universal suffrage. It no longer
parliamentary government,
enjoyed its former credit in the West,
where since parliamentary
democracy had been established universally, other problems
aroused popular enthusiasm and Socialism was gaining ground at
the expense of Nationalism. But it had now taken hold of Asia,
which it would completely revolutionize.
Of China in the first place. A revolt against foreign penetration
and the Manchu dynasty had akeady followed the Japanese vic
tories of 1895, when everyone expected China to be partitioned
between the Western Powers and Japan. The movement re
doubled its strength as a result of the Japanese victory of 1905. In
and
1906 an edict was published promising political reforms,
shortly afterwards
a constitution was drawn up by which the
would share the government with a representative, if
Emperor
not a democratic, assembly. In 1908, after the mysterious deaths
within two days interval of the Emperor and the dowager
Empress and the accession to the throne of an infant of three,
"
621
changes followed rapidly

and assumed a revolutionary complex
ion. In 1911 the Emperor granted the assembly a responsible
Cabinet. But when a rebellion broke out on the Yang-Tse-Kiang
it was only partially suppressed by the Prime Minister, Yuan-Shi-
Kai, an armistice was concluded with the rebels, and the Emperor .
abdicated having first set up a provincial Government to adminis

ter the country until the meeting of the Convention, which in
1912 proclaimed a Republic, Had Republicanism conquered or

been defeated? A
year later Yuan-Shi-Kai made himself dictator
and his Government displayed the same vices which had dis
credited the former Imperial Government. But this did not alter
the enormous significance of a revolution which had overthrown
the oldest of the great military monarchies.
The Chinese revolution proved detrimental to British influence.
The control of the Chinese customs which England had exercised
for the last fifty years was disputed and diminished, and if she
succeeded in obtaining for one of her subjects the control of the
duty on salt she renounced by a formal declaration her right,
accepted without question hitherto, to audit the balance sheet of

the railways built with British capital. Nor was it only the Chinese
who extorted concessions from England in China. It was all very
well for thenew Chinese Governments to charge the former Im
perialGovernment with weakness- they were weaker still. And
although a consortium of the four Great Powers had been estab
lished to harmonize their respective economic ambitions, the
struggle for concessions, the scramble for Chinese spoils recom
menced. An agreement between Russia and Japan compelled the
English and Americans to retreat from Manchuria. France secured
concessions in the south-west. And since
Germany was intriguing
against England on the Yang-Tse-Kiang and England needed, not
only in China but elsewhere, the diplomatic support of Russia,
Japan, and France, her diplomacy was obviously faced with a
checkmate. Under these circumstances it might have
expected
the support of the United States. For in
many respects American
policy in China was identical with British and it was in concert
with America that in 1902 England had persuaded the Powers to
proclaim the principle of the open door in China. But how much
was left of that principle by 1914? And what
weapons were at
the disposal of the two nations to enforce
great English-speaking
it? The American Government was opposed to any kind of
622
military intervention. And the British was compelled by the

pressure of the German navy to withdraw gradually all its ships
from Chinese waters. 1
Meanwhile the revolt of China was spreading and provoking
outside the country a far more direct opposition to British im
perialism. We
have seen how in India the Indian Councils Bill of
1909 had inaugurated an era of concessions to Hindu nationalism.
But would the Nationalists be content with what was obviously a
mere instalment? They made use of the elective element thus
introduced into the provincial legislative councils to render British
administration difficult throughout the entire country. And they
made their way into the branches of the Civil Service. Moreover
violent agitation continued. There were assassinations and bomb
throwing. England hoped to strike an effective blow by despatch
ing King George and die Queen to preside in person at the solemn
Durbar, which inaugurated at Delhi the new capital of British
India. The royal visit would, it was believed, endear the monarch
to his Indian subjects and give a sentimental consecration to Hindu
to this theatrical demonstration was the
loyalty. The Hindu reply
outrage committed a year later, on December 23, 1912,
in this
very city of Delhi. The Viceroy, Lord Hardinge was seriously

wounded by a revolutionary, who successfully made his escape.
England was clearly faced with a problem
of extraordinary
5
difficulty. The English ,

wrote a contemporary sadly, are interes
ted in this problem. But they are also tolerably anxious and they
make the mistake of letting this anxiety be seen/ 2
We have seen how in Egypt the Young-Egyptian movement
cast acloud over the final period of Lord Cromer s administration.
The administration of his successor, Sir Eldon Gorst, coincided
with years of economic depression, financial difficulties, and a
nationalist agitation amounting to rebellion. Sir Eldon continued
his predecessor s methods, though in consequence of the assassi
nation of the Prime Minister and the discovery of a plot against
hisown life and the Khedive s he found himself obliged to enforce
the Press laws more stringently than hitherto. He extended local
in the
self-government, giving greater powers, particularly
matter of education, to the provincial councils. But he firmly
O. P.
1
For the situation in China on the eve of the War see an excellent article by J.
Bland entitled The Future of China (Edinburgh Review, October 1914, No. 450, pp. 427
2
*India and the English (Round Table, November 15, 1910; vol. i, No. i, p. 45)-
VOL VI 22 O23
refused to introduce anything in the nature of a representative
parliament.
The first concessions to the Young-Egypt party were
made by Kitchener, who succeeded Eldon in 1911. While taking
energetic
measures to improve the economic situation of the
fellahin
and without success to solve the problem of
attempting
the mixed he drew up a constitution which was
tribunals,
in 1913. The Legislative Council and General Assembly
published
were superseded by a single body, the Legislative Assembly,
of whom sixty-six were
composed of eighty-nine members
elected. It would have the right to initiate legislation,
which the
council of ministers could veto for reasons stated. Moreover the
council would be to submit any measure of legislation it
obliged
thought desirable to the assembly,
on which the new constitution
a
conferred suspensive veto. the civil list and foreign policy
Only
would be entirely excluded from its control. It would be elected
indirectly by universal suffrage. In a document explaining the
principles
of the reform the hope was expressed that it would
educate politically the native population and little by little
enable it to secure from its legislature a faithful representation of
1
its interests .
In Persia the revolt of Asia assumed the same form as

every
where else. To
strip of
his power a sovereign whom they accused
of being in the pay of Russia, the Nationalists of Teheran deman

ded a democratic constitution, an assembly elected by universal
suffrage, and a responsible
Government. They could count upon
the sympathy of England, so that in Persia the same phenomenon
could be witnessed which had occurred so often in other countries
during the past century, a pre-established harmony between
British interests and the cause of liberty. Twice during the year
1906 several thousand of the population of Teheran encamped on

the huge piece of ground which was the property of the British
legation, and obtained by this gesture of passive protest

first the
1
Report for year 1913. Sidney Low, Egypt in Transition with an. Introduction by the
Earl of Cromer, 1914, pp. 230 sqq. Sir George Arthur, Life of Lord Kitchener, 1920, vol. ii,
especially for the constitutional question, pp. 330 sqq. The account is far from clear
but
makes it plain that when he granted Egypt a Legislative Assembly* Kitchener had no
intention of fostering the growth of a genuine system of parliamentary government in
Egypt.
624
THE EAST AND PRINCIPLE OP NATIONALITY
election. But
grant of a constitution by the Shah, then an actual
at this juncture the Anglo-Russian Convention of August 31,
1907, was concluded. The Convention brought into line the
policy
of the two empires in Asia and particularly in Persia. While
affirming the integrity and independence of Persia it recognized
,
Russia s special interest in the northern portion of the country,

which included Teheran, and the meaning of the phrase, as
was
employed by European diplomacy, is obvious. England
therefore obliged by the pact of 1907 to betray at Teheran the
Nationalist party, which had become accustomed to regard itself
as the English party. The problem became even more difficult
when, in 1910, Isvolsky, who had negotiated on behalf of Russia

the agreement of 1907, was succeeded as Foreign Minister by
Sazonov, who was far less friendly to England.
The Shah, driven from Teheran by a revolt, fled to Russian
territory where he
continued his intrigues. He was replaced on the
throne by a child of twelve, a tool of the Assembly. But a Russian
the constant
army occupied Tabriz and kept the capital under
threat of armed intervention. The Nationalist Government placed
an American named Shuster in control of the Persian finances. He
constituted himself the whole-hearted champion of the pro-
British as against the pro-Russian party. At the very moment of
the Agadir crisis when Russia was openly betraying her Western
friends and allies but when it was more than ever necessary to
avoid quarrelling with her, Shuster appointed Englishmen to the
most important posts in the government departments that is to
say, in the very zone in which the Convention of 1907 admitted
Russia s since it included Teheran. The Russian
special interest,
Government protested and the British was obliged to recognize
that the protestwas justified. The Government of Teheran dis
missed Shuster and shortly afterwards was overthrown by a
Russian army. The Shah was restored to his throne with despotic
Then Russia increased her demands. She proposed a
authority.
partition of
the zone hitherto left neutral between the British and
Russian zones, and spoke of a trans-Persian railway to run through
Teheran from the Caspian to the Persian Gulf. The British
Government, hands tied as they were by the necessities of its
its
itself in a humiliating position, powerless to

general policy, found
of Russian expansion. The English
oppose openly these projects
were furnished with an excellent
opponents of Grey policy
s
625
ground of attack. The advanced Liberals, foes of the Anglo-

Russian entente and champions of z rapprochement with Germany,
found powerful allies among the imperialists, particularly those
who took a special interest in India and the Middle East. They had
always regarded the Convention of 1907 as too favourable to
Russia. Now
they saw the Mohammedans of India, England s
most certain allies against an eventual rising of the Hindus,
denouncing the crime committed by the Foreign Office in aban
doning Teheran, one of the last remaining Moslem capitals, to
Russian rule. It was therefore a formidable attack, for it kept up
an incessant fire and was conducted on two fronts by Arthur Pon-
sonby on one side, by Lord Cuxzon on the other, which Grey had
to face when he defended his Persian policy as best he could,
whether in the Press or in Parliament. 1
These anxieties however, serious though they were, were
nothing in comparison with those caused by events nearer home.
For the revolt of Asia had reached Turkey and not only Turkey in
Asia but Turkey in Europe and had kindled in the Balkans a con
flagration destined shortly to spread until it had set the whole of
Europe on fire.
It was in
July 1908 that the Young-Turk movement broke out
at Salonika. On July 23 two army corps revolted and the following
day Abdul Hamid capitulated. The conspirators had no need, as
in Persia or China, to construct a completely new constitution. It
was sufficient to restore the constitution of 1876 based on indirect
election byuniversal suf&age, which the Sultan had abolished
thirty years before. Once reorganized, the Ottoman Empire, as
we have already had occasion to point out, would confront
Europe not formed by the subjection of several con
as a State
quered people to a conquering race, but as a State of the Western

type, in which the entire population, without distinction of race,
language, or creed would consist of Turkish citizens on an equal

footing. And for this very reason there could no longer be any
ground for the constant interference ofthe great Christian powers in
the domestic affairs of Turkey Turkey would no longer be humili
.
ated in the person of her Sultan. The national honour had been
saved by the accession to power of the Jacobins the Young Turks.
,
The hope was disappointed. Three months after the Young-

1
For the events in Persia see Edward G. Browne, The Persian Revolution ofl9Q5-i9Q9 t
1920 and W. Morgan Shuster, The Strangling ofPersia, aRecord ofEuropean Diplomacy, 1912.
626
Turk revolution Austria-Hungary annexed Bosnia and Herze
govina. Three years later Italy occupied the coast of Tripoli. The
disintegration of Turkey followed. It is susceptible of two alter
native explanations.
The first of these attributes the overthrow of Turkish
authority
in the Balkans to the
intrigues of the great powers. The war be
tween Turkey and Italy dragged on. Fear of
losing face prevented
the young Turks from
making peace. The Italian Ambassador in
Paris, Tittoni, entered into conversations with
Isvolsky, now
Russian Ambassador to France, who wanted to the humi avenge
liation inflicted upon him by Austria and Germany in 1909 by a
further attempt to establish Russian hegemony over the Darda
nelles. Why not provoke a rising of the Eastern Christians against
a joint attack upon her
Turkey^ by the Balkan powers? Under
Isvolsky auspices an alliance was concluded between Serbia and
s
Bulgaria, the germ of the triple alliance of the Serbs, Bulgars, and
Greeks. When this war or revolution broke out, would be Turkey
compelled to abandon the last remnants of her African dominions
to Italy, and Russia would make use of the
opportunity to secure
a free passage of the Dardanelles for her
warships, possibly to
effect a military
occupation of Constantinople.
We
do not believe that diplomacy exercises such
power over
human affairs. It is
by internal causes that we explain the dissolu
tion of the Ottoman Empire.^ No diplomatic intrigue provoked
the rebellion of the Assyrians, the Arabs in Asia, and the Albanians
Young Turks. When the

in Europe against the 1
Turks sur Young
rendered to the Albanians and granted them a measure of auto
nomy the Macedonian Christians inevitably demanded the same
concessions. The very fact of the
Young-Turk revolution gave
such impetus to the movement for
emancipation that for a time
the enmity between Serbs,
Bulgars, and Greeks was forgotten. The
Russian diplomats witnessed rather than
inspired the alliance be
2
tween Bulgaria and Serbia, arid if they deemed it advisable to
take the movement under their patronage, they were soon dis-
1
of Albania intrigue played a part it was Austrian. See De Saint-Aulaire
If in the case
to Raymond Poincare January 18, 1912; Krajewski to Raymond Poincare,
,
January 22,
1912 (Documents diplomatiquesfrangais . 3e Serie, vol. i, pp. 496-7, 518-20). Duchesneto
. .
Raymond Poincare", August 4, 1912 (Documents diplomatique* frartfais . . .

ae Serie, voLiii,
pp. 321-2).
2
Bompard to Raymond Poincare, August 4, 1912 (ibid., p. 320). Laroche to Briand,
August 20, 1912 (ibid., p. 377). Bompard to Raymond Poincare, September 21, 1912
(ibid., p. 547).
627
mayed by the violent passions unloosed at Sofia and Belgrade.

In any case no Russian or Italian action had anything to do with
the rapprochement between Greece and Bulgaria, and Greece and
Serbia. If any foreign influences were at work here they were
British, official To overthrow Abdul Hamid, the
or private, 1
Young Turks had appealed to the principle of nationality. That
revolutionary principle was now being turned against themselves.

What would be the issue of the conflict? Turkey was certainly
weak, but the prestige of her army stood high. Europe which
hardly knew what to expect or desire was soon relieved
of uncer
tainty. On October 17 and 18 Bulgaria, Serbia, and Greece re
called their Ambassadors from Constantinople. Four days later
in Thrace at the historic Battle of Kkk-Kiliss6 the Bulgarian army
routed the Turkish.
For a moment the allies were expected to make a triumphant
entry into Constantinople. And when at the beginning of Decem

ber they halted before the lines of Chataldja after investing Adrian-
ople, Turkey in Europe, apart from the environs of Constantinople
and a fragment of Thrace, could be regarded as a thing of the past.
An historic event of such grave import threatened the equilibrium
of Europe. How could Austria witness without anxiety this sudden
aggrandisement of Serbia which brought the Serbs to the coast of
the Adriatic? And if she intervened by force to debar the Serbs
from access to the Adriatic, or perhaps to take possession of the
Salonika route, would the Russian Government tolerate her inter
vention? In the name of Slavonic and pushed for
racial solidarity
ward by the pan-Slavs Russia might perhaps intervene, if need be
in the teeth of certain Balkan Slavs, to obtain possession of Con
stantinople and a free access to the Mediterranean. But Austria was

the ally of Germany. She could not go to war without her ally s
approval, and if a war against Serbia became a war against Russia,
the German army would come to the aid of the Austrian. France
in turn was Russia s ally. An alliance which at the end of the nine
teenth century might have been regarded as
protecting France
against the danger of a German invasion now exposed her to it.
1
Documents diplomatique* frangais ... 30 Srie, vol. iii, p. 303 n.; Deville to Raymond
Poincar6, August I, 1912 (ibid., p. 314).
628
But it was quite impossible for France to break free
from the
The German Government left her no choice in the matter.
alliance.
The mere existence of a large French army in its rear while it was
fighting the Russian forces constituted too great a military danger
for the German Staff to accept. A
march on Paris and the an
nihilation of the French army would be the first act of the
European war, as its scenario had been drawn up in Berlin. But
if France were involved in war, England, her cordial friend,
could not remain, a disinterested spectator. "What would her
attitude be?
We must bear in mind that it was at the very time when the
Balkan War was brewing and finally broke out that the Foreign
Office and Admiralty concluded the double negotiations which
led on the one hand to a written definition of the entente in Novem-
ber 1912, on the other to the conclusion in February 1913 of a
naval convention, which completed the alliance between the two
armies, effected six years before, by an agreement between the two
navies for concerted action against the common enemy. But it was
at the same moment that Grey made the most marked advances to
Germany he ever made while he was at the Foreign Office. On

October 7 he sent for the charge d affaires, Von Kuhlmann, com
municated to him the conversations which had taken place be
tween himself and Sazonov, who had just visited London, and
his anxiety, to remain in touch with
expressed his wish, indeed
him. 1 At a second interview with Von Kuhlmann on the I4th he
seemed disappointed to hear that the German Government had
2
not thought fit to reply to his advances, and that very evening
his chief secretary, Sir William Tyrell, dining with Von Kuhlmann
tendered him the olive branch in the name of the Foreign Secre
tary andexpressed the wish for an intimate collaboration between
the two powers* not only in Europe, but in China, Persia, Turkey,
and Africa. 3 The following morning Tyrell returned to the Ger
man Embassy to explain presumably on Grey s behalf that the
chief s personal views
evening before he had simply expressed his
and that for the moment no communication would be made either
to Sir Arthur Nicolson the under-secretary, or to Sir
permanent
1
Von Kuhlmann to the German Foreign Office, October 7, 1912 (Die Grosse Politik . . .
vol. xxxiii, pp. 175-6)*

2
Von Kiihlmann to Bethmann-Hollweg, October 14, 1912 (ibid, vol. xxxiii, p. 221).
3
Von Kiihlmann to Bethmann-Hollweg, October 15, 1912 (ibid., vol. xxxiii, p. 228
sqq.).
629
Edward Goschen, die British Ambassador at Berlin. 1 The prospect
of an Anglo-German entente delighted the German charge
d affaires. The Wilhelmstrasse was more sceptical though quite
2
ready to take advantage of the British minister s friendly attitude.
What interpretation are we to put upon this secret advance by
Grey? What light does it throw on the methods of British diplo
macy at this juncture ?
It
suggests a disagreement between Grey s views and those cur
rent at the Foreign Office. For Sir Arthur Nicolson, as for his
assistant ,
Sir Eyre Crowe, the distinction between an entente
and an alliance was purely verbal: the Triple Entente was simply
another Triple Alliance; a counterblast to the Triple Alliance be
tween Germany, Austria, and Italy. 3 When Grey, before he took
office had championed a rapprochement with France and Russia,
his views probably did not differ from those of Sir Arthur Nicol
son, his predecessor Lord Hardinge, and any diplomats he might
choose to help him at the Foreign Office. But we have already
seen how as a responsible minister he became the link between
these permanent officials and a parliamentary majority and a
Cabinet whose attitude was different. He was obliged to take their
views into account and was perhaps himself affected in the long
run by the arguments of those who were opposed to a policy of
continental alliances. The result of these cross-currents was the
elaboration of what we may term the doctrine of an entente as dis
tinct from an alliance. The entente meant preparations
complete to
the last detail for concerted military action, to be taken automatic
ally and immediately, by the parties to it, if ever they found them
selves jointly engaged in war. And in the autumn of 1912 a further
step was taken and France and England agreed that if a serious
situation arose they would take joint diplomatic action without
waiting for the outbreak of war. But this was all. There was no
agreement to make war, in circumstances defined beforehand.
Whatever the casus belli England reserved to the last moment her
1
Von Kuhlmann to the German Foreign Office, October 16, 1912 (Die Grosse
Politik . . . vol. xxxiiijp. 232),
2
Von Kiderlen to Von Kuhlmann, October 20, 1912 (ibid., vol. xxxiii, p. 233).
3
Count von BenckendorfT to Sazonov, November 1-14., 1912: *. Nicolson told . .
Cambon with the utmost emphasis that in the event of war between the Triple and the
Dual Alliance England would not in his opinion remain neutral. I must however add that
Nicolson s views are not always the same as Grey s. (Graf BenckendorfFs, Diplomatischer
Briefwechsel Band, ii, p. 491. Cf. MensdorfFs despatch from London of June 6, 1913
(Osterreich-Ungarns Aussenpolitik . . . vol. vi, p. 608).
630
freedom to intervene or remain neutral. She even claimed the
right, if the Power against which the entente was directed were
willing to abstain from any step which would embroil England
with her friends on the Continent and refrained from challenging
her in a competition of armaments, to complete the ententes with
France and Russia by some kind of entente with Germany. It \\ as
an entente of this kind which Grey offered Germany at the very
moment when the first Balkan war broke out and Sir William
Tyrell was his agent in the private negotiations he conducted
with the two Great Powers of Central Europe,1 while Sir Arthur
Nicolson, kept in ignorance of Sir William s action, remained
his agent in all dealings with France and Russia with whom he
was determined to maintain cordial relations. 2 As for Grey him
self, the language he used to the Ambassadors of France and
Russia was not altogether the same as that employed by his
1
For ^the part played at this junction by Sir William Tyrell see Prince Lichnowsky
Meine Londoner Mission, Eine Denkschrift, verfasst in August 1916, p. 26. After the
Foreign Secretary, Sir A. Nicolson and Sir W. Tyrell were the most influential persons at
the Foreign Office. The former was no friend of ours. ... He was in the confidence of my
French colleague with whom he was in permanent contact. He even wanted to replace
Lord Bertie in Paris. . . . Sk Edward Grey s private secretary, Sir W.
Tyrell possessed far
greater influence than the permanent under-secretary. A
man of very high intellectual
gifts he had studied at a Gymnasium in Germany. He adopted a diplomatic career but had
served abroad only a short time. Though he shared at first the anti-German attitude popu
lar among young British diplomats he became later the convinced advocate of an under
standing with our country. He has influenced Sir Edward Grey with he was on whom
intimate terms in this direction/ For the confidential relations between Tyrell and Count*
MensdorfT throughout the Balkan wars see the latter s despatches. April n, 15, May 9,
June 4, 1913, Osterreich-Ungarns Aussenpolitik . . vol. vi, pp. 105, 159, 397, 596-7. This
.
would seem to have been his attitude since the beginning of 1911 (see Count MensdorfFs
despatches March 17, May 26, 1911. ibid., pp. 214-252. In the spring of 1914 we find von
Jagow the German Foreign Minister attempting to arrange a meeting with Tyrell. But
the latter refused (G. von Jagow, England und der Kriegsausbruch. Eine Auseinandersctzung
mitLord Grey, unit einem Nachwort von Alfred von Wegener, 1925, p. 32 .).) But at this very
time Tyrell was the diplomatic agent whom Grey employed to explore the possibility of
effecting a rapprochement with Germany through the mediation of the United States (see
above p. 618).
2
Notice how Grey himself on the eve of the World War described the relations be
tween England and France and Russia. Sir Edward Grey to Sir Edward Goschen, June
24, 1914: *. . . I said to Prince some difficulty in talking to him
Lichnowsky that I felt
about our relations with France and Russia. was quite easy for me to say, and quite true,
It
that there was no alliance; no agreement committing us to action; and that all the agree
ments of that character that we had with France and Russia had been published. On the
other hand, I did not wish to mislead the ambassador by making him think that the rela
tions that we had with France and Russia were less cordial and intimate than they really
were. Though we were not bound by engagement as allies, we did from time to time talk
*
asintimately as allies (British Documents vol. xi, pp. 4-5.) Colonel House to Presi
. . .
dent Wilson, August 1, 1914: *. Sir Edward Grey told me that England had no written
. .
agreement with either Russia or France, or any formal alliance; that the situation was
brought about by a mutual desire for .protection; and that they discussed international
matters with as much freedom with one another as if they had an actual written alliance/
(The Intimate Papers of Colonel House, vol. i, p. 485.)
631
Under-Secretary, nor was the language he used to the German

Ambassador exactly the same as that employed by his private
secretary. In particular he was careful to explain to Lichnowsky
that if he was so anxious for German assistance in his efforts to
maintain peace, it was because in the event of a war between the
Continental Powers England could not avoid intervention and if
she intervened it would not be on the side of Germany. 1 On the
other hand when King George, speaking to Prince Henry of
firm language which Sir Arthur Nicolson might
Prussia, used the
have employed had he been King instead of a mere official at the
2
Foreign Office, Grey expressed his entire approval. The system
was a maze in whose windings Lord Haldane had all but lost him
self a few months earlier. But its architect, Grey, threaded his
way with an imperturbable sangfroid.
as we have just described

The policy of the British Government,
it,proved successful since the Balkan crisis was settled without a
European war. The success however was due in reality to the fact
1 Prince Lichnowsky to the Minister for Foreign Affairs, December 4, 1912: If a
European war broke out as a result of Austrian action against Serbia, and Russia, yielding
to the pressure of public opinion and to avoid another humiliation such as she suffered in
1909, invaded GaHcia, a step which would involve our intervention, France could not
avoid taking part in the war and the further consequences could not be foreseen. This is
the second occasion on which he has made use of this latter circumlocution whose
signifi
cance cannot be misunderstood. In this connection several persons in his intimacy have
told me during the last few days that the present government is determined to do
every
thing possible to prevent European complications arising because it fears they might hin
der the rapprochement with ourselves which it desires to bring about, and it is a matter of
life and death for her,
though England has no secret agreements with France to prevent
our inflicting a crushing defeat upon France. England would therefore find herself com
pelled in the event of our victory over France to intervene on her behalf. (Die Grosse
Politik . vol. xxxiii, pp. 417, 453.) Notice on the other hand the caution with which
. .
Grey refused to inform BenckendorfT, the Russian Ambassador, what attitude England
would adopt should the war become general. (Count von BenckendortT to Sazonov,
November 1-14, 1912; Graf von BenckendortT, Diplomatischer Briefwechsel, vol. ii, p. 490.)
2
MensdortT telegram despatched from London, December 22, 1912. When Prince
Henry of Prussia visited England not long ago and the King told him he was sorry that
Herr von Bethmann in his speech in the Reichstag had directly alluded to the
possibility of
war and had not maintained the same reserve as Count Berchfeld, M. Sazonov and Sir
Edward Grey Prince Henry asked him the direct question whether in the event of a war
between Austria-Hungary and Germany and Russia and France
England would intervene
on behalf of the latter. King George replied, "Certainly under certain circumstances* .
When Prince Henry displayed annoyance and surprise the King proceeded: "Do you
imagine we have less sense of honour than you? You have formal alliances, we have un
written understandings. But we cannot allow either France or Russia to be defeated."
(Osterrcichr-Ungarns Aitssenpolitik . . . vol. v, pp. 212-4.)
632
that throughout the crisis the
policy of the other Governments
resembled in many respects that of the British. In every
European
capital the desire to preserve peace proved stronger than the spirit
of warlike adventure and the sentiment of what was once more
termed by the revival of an old phrase the European concert
prevailed over the spirit of national and racial animosity which
inspired the two rival groups. In the first pkce we must remem
ber that the web of international relations was so
complicated
that the system of alliances could not
always be consistently
worked. In Constantinople France was obliged to support Russia
for political reasons, but her financial interests inclined her rather
to die side of Germany, and it often
happened that the French
Ambassador, speaking as the mouthpiece of the French colony,
expressed himself in a sense hostile to Russia and sometimes even
to England. Germany was the ally not only of Austria, but of
Italy, and to prevent Italy leaving the Triple Alliance the German
Government was compelled to discourage any Austrian attempt
at expansion in the Mediterranean area. In the second place the
revival in the three Courts of Berlin, Vienna, and Petersburg of
that spirit of monarchical solidarity on which the Holy Alliance
had been based a century earlier was a powerful factor making
for peace. The Emperor Francis Joseph sent an Austrian noble of
high rank to Petersburg on a mission of conciliation. At Peters
burg the Conservative party, the determined champion of an
understanding with the Prussian monarchy, held office in the
person of Kokovtsov. King George and the Emperor Nicolas
visited Berlin for the marriage of a royal Princess and their
friendly conversations with the German Emperor, if apparently

devoid of any political character, helped nevertheless to relax the
1
diplomatic tension. Finally the great civilized nations had for
close upon fifty years grown unaccustomed to war, though
making unremitting preparations for it, and statesmen on the

brink of the gulf which divides peace and war, were sensible of
the abyss at their feet and shrank from taking the plunge.
The British attitude however differed in one respect from that of
1
See the private letter written by Szogyeny from Berlin on May 20, 1913 : *. . I have
.
been able to have a few words only with Herr von Jagow since his return from Vienna.
He and the other officials of the Foreign Office are at present so busy making preparations
to receive the royal guests who are coming to Berlin for the wedding of Princess Victoria
Louise that as the Secretary of State assured me, they have at present no time for politics
and are thinking of nothing but the marriage. (Osterreich-Ungams Aussenpolitik . vol.
. .
vi, p. 467-)
633
the other Governments. The British Government wanted the
European states to settle the Balkan crisis by joint action, to forget

as far as possible their
membership of opposite political groups
and think only of the supreme interest of peace. The other Powers,
however, refused to lose sight of their alliances even for the mo
ment. They regarded the European concert as an understanding
between two combinations which even while acting together
must act as such. One Government perhaps pursued a slightly dif
ferent policy. The German Government sought to drive a wedge
into the Triple Entente by separating France from Russia, as it had
successfully done in 1 909 and in 1 9 1 1 , or England from France and

Russia, and though on this occasion it failed to achieve the former
object, it could cherish or at least spread the belief that it had
achieved the latter. Foreign
policy during the last few years has
been too rigid, Haldane told Lichnowsky on December 3, it must
be made more gelatinous. 1 And since this was precisely the aim
which the Prussian Government was pursuing, at least so far as
the Triple Entente was concerned it wanted to reduce it to a
jelly we
often receive the impression during the long months
for which the Balkan wars dragged on that a reconciliation had
begun between England and Germany. It was loudly advertised

in Germany. And die English were delighted.
For the real difference between British policy and that of the
other nations must be sought not in the attitude of their
respective
Governments but in the attitude of the people. On the Continent
the Governments of the great nations were more cautious than
the public, at least that opinionated and violent section of the
public which finds utterance in the Press. As regards Austria this
isa truism. In Russia reaction against the schemes of annexation
entertained by the military party in Austria had
provoked a pan-
Slavonic campaign in the Press which caused the ministers con
siderable embarrassment. It was only natural that the Germans of
Germany should make common cause with the Germans of
Austria in the event of a conflict with the Slavs. In France the news
of the first Turkish defeats was the signal for an enthusiastic cele
bration by almost the entire Press of the victories won
by the
allies which were
regarded as victories won by Le Creusot s
cannon over Krupp s, victories therefore of the French over the
1
Prince Lichnowsky to December 3, 1912 (Die
Bethmann-Hollweg, Grosse Politik . . .
VOl. XXxix, pp.
J2I-2),
German army. Moreover, we must remember that the German
and French Governments were faced by special difficulties in pur
suing a policy of peace. For at the opening of 1913 the German
Government thought it
necessary to make provision against the
dangers of the moment by asking for an enormous increase in the
army, to which the French Government replied by asking for a
return to the system of three years service. But in two countries
possessing universal suffrage
an elective assembly could be in
duced to shoulder such burdens only by inflaming the patriotic
sentiments of the masses. It was no easy task to pursue at the same
time a foreign policy of peace and a European concert. England
was confronted by no such difficulties.
When we read English newspapers of the period we gather at
first the impression of a profound cleavage in -public opinion.
Generally speaking the Conservative Press, attached though it

might be to the principle of an entente with Russia when the threat
from the German navy had to be met in the West, detected Rus
sian pan-Slavism at work behind the Balkan alliance, pictured the
Russian army already on the Bosphorus and upheld the traditional
English policy of protecting Turkey against Russia. And
how
coijdd Great Britain, a great Moslem Power, favour a war which
had the aspect of a crusade without giving offence to millions of
her subjects? When, lastly, the owner of an important Unionist
the barbarities of Russian
paper was a Jew his indignation against
anti-semitism strengthened his mistrust of the policy pursued at
Petersburg. Among the Liberals on
the contrary the spectacle of
Bulgarians, Serbs, and Greeks reconciled against the Turk revived

the old Liberal-Christian tradition of Gladstone. year earlier A
the prospect of a war in which the English would shed their
blood to serve the interests of French against German imperialism
was anathema to the staff of the Nation and the Manchester Guar
dian and to combat it the utilitarian philosophy of peace at any
price made fashionable by Norman Angell was accepted without

reserve. It was altogether different now. War, it was allowed,
if waged for justice and liberty. But where was
might be noble, 4
the Gladstone to lead this movement of public opinion ? Churchill

who blew the war trumpet1 did not possess, as everyone admitted,
1
Speech at Sheffield, October 30, 1912
: We
*. . . have sometimes been assured by persons
who profess to know that the danger
of war has become an illusion and that in these
modern days that danger would not exist at all but for the machinations of statesmen and
diplomatists, but for the intrigues
of financiers, aided by the groundless suspicions of
635
the temperament of a Gladstone. Conceivably Lloyd George
might have been attracted by such a role. But he had other con
cerns. Moreover if a new Gladstone could have been discovered,
not only would he have failed to arouse popular enthusiasm, he
would not even have found a Lord Beaconsfield to combat. The
time had gone by when parties were divided by questions of
foreign policy. The nation, completely absorbed by social and
Irish questions, made the Press, whatever its political complexion,
understand that it must be more moderate in the expression of its
preferences. When he adopted an attitude of strict neutrality and
impartial opposition to the war and tried to induce the other
powers to do the same, Grey was pursuing to the letter the policy
the British people wished him to pursue. .
Count Berchtold was the first statesman to appeal to the powers

to intervene: in August 1912 he invited them to put joint pressure
on the allies to prevent them from declaring war, and on Turkey
to secure the adoption of reforms which by satisfying its Christian
subjects would deprive the former of every pretext for hostilities.
The initiative was coldly received by the Foreign Office, which
saw nothing but danger in the suggestion of putting pressure on
the Turkish Government. When, at the end of September, the
allies had mobilized and war was imminent it was the turn of
Raymond Poincare, Prime Minister and Foreign Minister and

shortly to become President of the Republic, to intervene. He
suggested joint action by the Powers to inform the allies that no
alteration in the map of the Balkans would be tolerated, the
Turks that they must carry out long-promised reforms in favour
of the Christian population of their empire. The British Govern
ment was the last to axxept the French proposal, which in its
opinion bore too hardly upon the Turks. But hostilities had
generals and admirals and fomented by the sensationalism of the Press all directed upon
the ignorance and credulity of the people. Well, here is a war which has arisen from none
of these causes, which has broken out in spite of all that rulers and diplomatists could
do to prevent it, a war in which the Press has had no part, a war which the whole force of
the money power has been subtly and steadfastly directed to prevent, which has come
upon us, not through the ignorance and credulity of the people, but on the contrary,
through, their knowledge of their history and their destiny, and through their intense
realization of their wrongs and of their duties, as they conceived them, a war which from
all these causes has burst
upon us with all the force of a spontaneous explosion, and which
in strife and destruction has carried all before it. Face to face with this manifestation, who
is the man who is foolish Who is the man who
enough to say that force is never a remedy ?
is vain
enough to suppose that the long antagonism of history, and of time can in all cir
cumstances be adjusted by the smooth and superficial conventions of
politicians and
ambassadors?
636
already opened and it was obvious that no diplomatic action

could prevent thoroughgoing changes in the boundaries of the
Balkan States. Poincare was the first to suggest mediation by the
Great Powers and an international conference to decide the con
ditions of peace, and his proposals were finally
accepted though
not without very considerable modifications.
In the first place there was no hew
Congress of Berlin at which
the Powers carved up the Balkans as they
thought fit. There was
simply a conference at a European capital of delegates from the
belligerent nations and at the same time a meeting nothing
more of the ambassadors of the Great Powers to deliberate on the
questions, strictly limited in number, which the Balkan war had
raised and which might endanger the
peace of the world. In the
second place Poincare had wanted the Conference to be held in
Paris. Sazonov made the proposal on his behalf and it was
warmly
welcomed by Grey, who wished to escape the responsibility and
vexations a conference in London would involve. But the Central
Powers wanted London not Paris. In Paris Russia would be
represented by Isvolsky. Obsessed by the desire to avenge the
humiliation he had endured in 1909 as Foreign Minister, Isvolsky
was making unwearied efforts to conquer the Press and the poli
ticalworld. It would, be preferable to deal with Benckendorff,
the Russian Ambassador -in London, a man of mature wisdom,
a diplomat of the old school, and a supporter of the policy of a
European concert. In Paris a partisan Press treated the Balkan war

as if it were aTrench war. The atmosphere of London was more
favourable to a conference of arbitration. Finally Poincare was
too energetic a statesman, too obviously eager to play a leading
part as chairman of the Conference. Grey would make a better
chairman, for the very reason that he had no desire to preside.
We must not therefore imagine that the British public or even
the Londoners were flattered that London had been chosen as the
scene of so important an event. The general feeling was one of
indifference, if not boredom. The presence of this host of Levan
tines from Constantinople, Athens, Sofia, and Belgrade who
chatter in the lounges of
merely added their
quota to the social
the great cosmopolitan hotels passed almost unnoticed. As for
the conversations between the ambassadors Grey was at pains to
give them as unceremonious and private a character
as possible.
He was often absent even at the most critical moments and his
637
pkce as the representative of the Cabinet was taken by Asquith

or Lord Morley. These disappearances surprised the foreigners
who attributed to the British minister when he absented himself
motives of which he was completely innocent. 1 He simply wanted
a rest. There is some prospect of rain and if so the sport will be
very good. It seems almost too much to expect that everything

including both Balkan crises and salmon should go well simul
taneously, but things seem to prosper so well in my absence that
it would not be in the
public interest for me to curtail it. I am in
rude health with an appetite for everything except office work. 2
This British indifference has always nonplussed and exasperated
Continental diplomats. Listen to Lichnowsky, after his first meet
ing with Grey on the latter s return from holiday. 1 have just had
an interview with Sir Edward Grey in which we discussed the
situation fully. He regards it with his usual imperturbability and
icy calm. He even found rime to tell me all about the fish he
3
caught on his holiday.
The Chataldja armistice was not the inauguration of peace.

Outstanding questions remained to be settled the Greek claim
to the islands and the Bulgarian claim to
Adrianople. For the
Greeks had not taken the islands, nor the Bulgars Adrianople. A
renewal of hostilities was expected daily. If they broke out, pan-
Slavic opinion in Russia demanded a demonstration
against
Turkey whose obstinacy was delaying peace. Sazonov proposed a
joint naval demonstration. Grey, his colleagues in the Cabinet
and the Foreign Office hung back. If the Young Turks refused to
yield, it would mean war and England would not have war under
any circumstances. Fortunately for England the German Govern
ment flatly rejected the suggestion of a naval demonstration. To
pacify Russia Grey was content to propose, if the Bulgarians cap
tured Chataldja and anarchy
prevailed at Constantinople, the
despatch of an international squadron, not to carry out a naval
1
See the report of Commander Horvath, military attache to the
Austro-Hungarian
Embassy in London, April 24, 1913 (Feldmarshall Conrad von Hotzendorf, Aus meiner
Dienstzeitt vol. iii, pp-. 264 sqq.).
*
Sir Edward Grey to Sir Arthur Nicolson, April 19, 1913
(Harold Nicolson, Lord
Cftmock, p. 3 89).
8
Prince Lichnowsky to the Minister for Foreign Affairs,
April 28, 1913 (Die Grosse
Politik . . . vol. xxxiv 11 , p. 756).
638
demonstration, but merely to protect Europeans whose lives
might be in danger. Again
Germany refused, maintaining that
the vessels already stationed in the Dardanelles would be sufficient
for the purpose. Andthe British Government, a faithful mirror
of public feeling,was only too pleased to yield to the German
objection. Meanwhile the war party gained the upper hand in
Constantinople, imprudently broke the armistice and when hos
tilities were renewed, lost
Adrianople. Slowly and under great
difficulties
negotiations began in London between the delegates of
the allies and the Turkish delegates. But new
questions now occu
pied the meetings of the ambassadors, in the first place that of
Albania.
When, in 1912, the Balkan Powers formed a league against
Turkey, Serbia, and Greece had divided Albania, and Monte
negro demanded her share of the spoils. But neither Italy nor
Austria would accept such an extension of Greece and still less
of Serbia to the Adriatic coast. They agreed to invoke
against
Greece and Serbia the principle of
nationality which the latter
had invoked against the Ottoman Empire. They claimed Albania
not for themselves, deadly foes in spite of their alliance, but for the
Albanians. To define the status of this new country, trace its fron
tiers, and find away without giving Serbia the territorial outlet
on the sea which she demanded and
upon which the Russian
Government, defying the Pan-Slavists anger, refused to insist,
of granting her at least certain facilities of commercial transit were
the problems which from December onwards were the
ordinary
topics of discussion at the ambassadors meetings.
But the Montenegrin army, assisted by Serbian reinforcements
and commanded at one moment by a Serbian general, defied the
prohibition of the Powers and continued to invest the town of
Scutari. Would this involve war with Austria? And if a war
broke out between Austria and Serbia would it in turn involve
a European war? There was only one
way by which the danger
could be removed; the European concert must prove its solidarity
by a joint demonstration which would compel Montenegro to
yield. On March 22 the ambassadors meeting decided to make
the proposal. On the 25th Grey and Asquith, speaking in the
House of Commons, advised Montenegro not to persist in a war
from which she would not be allowed to reap any advantage and
c
warned her that she would be confronted with the united
. . .
639
1
pressure of all the Powers . But what form
should this pressure
take? Berlin proposed a naval demonstration by Austria and Italy
as mandatories of all the Powers. Grey thought it inadvisable that
the mandatories should be two members of the same group. He
suggested a naval demonstration in which the fleets of the six
Great Powers should participate. But fear of the Pan-Slavists
compelled the Russian Government to refuse. It advised the
French Government to take part in the demonstration but dared
not give it an official commission to do so. And without that
commission the French Government shrank from associating it
self with the demonstration, for it dared not brave the anger of
the French Press, more Slavophil than the Russian Government
itself. For a moment England was faced with the danger of
being
involved in a step in which her only associates would be the three
members of the Triple Alliance. In the end the danger was
averted. A French man-of-war joined the rest acting in the name
of France and at the invitation of Russia. As a result of the joint
action of the Powers the Serbian Government withdrew its forces
from the walls of Scutari. But the Montenegrins persisted with
the siege and took Scutari unaided. What was the use of the naval
demonstration, if this affront was not met by the landing of
troops? This however England would not hear of. Scutari was
not worth the life of a single bluejacket.2 Grey was content with
informing King Nicolas that if he submitted to the wishes of the
1
Sir Edward Grey speech: *. . Once an announcement has been made to Servia and
s .
Montenegro Powers have come to an agreement and of their decision, there

that the
ought to be a cessation of hostilities in what is in future to be Albania.
. If the decision
. .
of the Powers is not respected, then I trust that those who dispute it will be confronted,
not with any separate action on the part of one Power, which may divide the Powers,
but with the united Pressure of all the Powers/ He ad s the following characteristic
is only a mediation of the Powers. I do not mean to
qualification: "This
say that the
Powers have made up their minds to enforce a compulsory arbitration or to impose terms/
(Parliamentary Debates^ Commons 1913; 5th Series, vol. 1, pp. 1499-1500.)
2
Prince Lichnowsky to the Minister for Foreign Affairs, April 24, 1913 ...! am con
:
vinced that the present Government will never take the responsibility of exposing British
troops to the danger of being fired upon by the Montenegrins, if only because such a war
would be unpopular/ Von Tschirschky to the Minister for Foreign Affairs, April 24, 1913 :
*. . . Mr.
Asquith and Sir A. Nicolson have given me to understand that they will not
take the risk of British soldiers being fired upon. Prince Lichnowsky to the Minister for
Foreign Affairs, April 25, 1913 : Mr. Asquith . . . asked me not to persist with a proposal
involving the participation of British troops. Public opinion as it is at present would not
support the Government in such action and the Cabinet as was agreed at the last Cabinet
council was therefore not in a position to hazard the lives of British
subjects/ Von Tschir
schky to the German Foreign. Office, April 28, 1913: *The King (King George in the
course of conversation with the Austrian) expressed himself
strongly against the despatch
of troops. He would not take the risk that British soldiers might be fired
upon/ (Die
Grosse Politik . . . voL xxxiv1 , pp. 724, 727, 734, 760.)
640
Powers, they were prepared to discuss reasonable concessions after
the evacuation of Scutari. If on the
contrary he refused their request
the British Government would him no support and leave
give
him to his fate 1 Paris followed suit.
.
Did this not give Austria a
freehand to take independent action if
Montenegro proved obsti
nate? But the inaction of the British ministers was
justified by the
event. Vienna found no
support at Berlin and was afraid ofpro
voking by its intervention a counter-intervention by Italy. The
King of Montenegro on the other hand was not encouraged by
Petersburg and yielded. Austrian militarists were disappointed
in their hope of a war of
conquest. But the Slavs lost Scutari.
On
May 30 a general pacification seemed imminent. At Grey s
invitation the delegates to the Conference signed the Preliminar
ies of London By its terms
.
Turkey surrendered to the allies the
districtof Adrianople and Crete and left the fate of the islands and
the Athos peninsula to the decision of the six Great Powers. But
it did not mean
peace, for the allies had still to divide the spoils of
victory and it hid
long been known in London that there was
dissension between them. Serbia and Greece deprived by the
powers of Albania, which they had partitioned in anticipation in

1912, demanded compensation in the east in Macedonia. The
agreement of 1912 had assigned part of Macedonia to Bulgaria
and left the other part to the Czar s decision. But it was occupied
at present by Serbian and Greek forces. It was for the Bulgarians
to conquer it by force if they dared. They dared and war broke
out afresh. The Bulgarians were attacked in the rear by Rou-
mania, which for months had demanded a rectification of the
frontier to the disadvantage of Bulgaria a conference of ambas
sadors at Petersburg had attempted in vain to arrange an amicable
settlement and in front by Turkey, delighted to have this oppor
tunity to take her revenge within a few months for such crushing
defeats.
It was a sordid struggle but its
ignobility actually favoured the
maintenance of peace, for it cut across the two rival systems of
1
Pichon to Doulcet, April 29, 1913 (Ministere des Affaires ttrangeres. Documents diplo
matique*. Les affaires balkaniques [1912-1914], 1920. T. n, p. 174).
641
the Triple Alliance and the Triple Entente. The German Govern
ment supported Roumania, as also did the French, though ham
pered by of jeopardizing the alliance with Russia. On the
fear
other hand Austria, the foe of Serbia, and Russia, the foe of
Roumania, found themselves unexpectedly united in a common
support of Bulgaria. Once more Austria wanted to go to war,
once more Germany held her back. For some weeks relations
between the two allies were extremely strained. Finally, when
the Turkish army reconquered Adrianople the position of the
Powers became still more awkward. For it was the preliminaries
of London of which they were guarantors which the Turkish
Government was tearing up. The Russian Government demanded
an armed demonstration, naval to begin with. In England, the
conflict between Turkey s friends and foes broke out anew. The
latter were the more numerous in the Liberal party and Asquith
1
thought it safe to threaten Turkey at a public meeting. But her
friends proved finally the more powerful, not only in die country
as a whole but even in the Liberal ranks, because their policy was
one of inaction. Grey was willing to agree to independent inter
vention by Russia, provided it had the approval of Berlin, or
alternatively to a joint naval demonstration if all the Powers took
part in it. In other words he opposed from the outset any naval
demonstration, because he knew Germany objected. He suggested
financial action, but the financiers, particularly the French, would
not hear of a measure from which Turkey s French creditors
would be the first to suffer. Nothing was done and on July 29,
tired out and as usual impatient to begin his holiday, Grey pro
posed that the ambassadors meeting should be adjourned sine

die. It was in vain that Cambon and Benckendorff
protested
against a decision which seemed to denote a rupture between the
Powers. La a fortnight s time the ambassadors were forgotten.
At last peace was signed on August 10 at the capital of a vic
torious Roumania between Bulgaria on the one hand, Roumania,
Serbia and Greece on the other, and the treaty of Bucharest was
completed on September 17 by a treaty signed at Constantinople
between Bulgaria and Turkey. Bulgaria lost the entire basin of
the Vardar; Salonika and a considerable portion of Thrace, in
cluding the fort of Cavala, went to Greece. Roumania annexed
a large strip of Bulgarian territory between the Danube and the
1
Speech at Birmingham, July 21, 1913.
642
sea. And the Bulgars lost
Adrianople, only a few weeks after the
Serbo-Montenegrins had lost Scutari. It was on this final point
that the agreement concluded in London was
directly violated.
The defeated party was therefore entitled to call
upon the Powers
to intervene or at least to protest. The Russian and Austrian
Governments demanded that the Treaty of Bucharest should be
revised and for a moment Grey seemed disposed to agree. A con
siderable section of the British Press and of the Liberal Press in
particular was clamouring for a revision of the treaty. But he was

confronted by the opposition of the German and French Govern
ments, and he retreated. He soon perceived that the public indigna
tion was superficial and that the dominant sentiment
throughout
the country was delight that peace had been restored on any terms
whatsoever. The public would not admit that the European con
cert had failed. For although it had not succeeded in
preventing
war from breaking out, and twice recommencing and had dic
tated only to a very slight extent the conditions of peace, it had
at least kept the struggle localized in the Balkans and
prevented
developing into a European war. Men of all parties were
1
it from
grateful to Grey for having done more than any other statesman
to achieve this result, by his firm determination to do nothing.
His popularity, eclipsed at the beginning of 1912 because he had
committed England more deeply than she desired to Continental
entanglements in the train of France, was greater than ever at the
close of 1913 because he had adopted the contrary attitude on
dealing with Balkan affairs.
amusing to read in the New Statesman, within a fortnight s interval, two dia
1 It is
metrically opposite estimates of the diplomacy of the Powers during the Balkan wars,
both supported by equally good arguments. November 15, 1913: *. . The Concert of
.
Europe . .
during the past twelve months has come to grief over many fences there. It
.
ordered the Balkan allies not to go to war with Turkey and they went to war. It ordered
the Montenegrins not to take Scutari and they took Scutari. It forced Greece and Servia
to sign the Treaty of London with the Turks and then let the Turks break the Treaty. It
commanded the Turks to leave Adrianople and allowed them to stay there. It looked on
and let Austria egg on Bulgaria to attack her allies and egg on the Albanians to raid Servia.
It extracted a promise from Italy to leave the jÊgean and is permitting her to make open
arrangements to remain there. It has alternately worried the weak and yielded to the
strong and has been by turns meddlesome, callous and helpless. November 29, 1913 (an
article by Lord Esher): The art of diplomacy has been justified in 1913. A Balkan war,
annually prophesied as impending and to be certain to precipitate Armageddon, has

come and gone. Europe, in the sense of what are called the Great Powers, remained at
peace. This was due, not to die special friendliness of nations, certainly not to the restraint
of the Press but to the governments concerned and to their representatives: in short, to the
art of diplomacy.*
643
7
But was the peace likely to prove lasting ? This was very widely
doubted, and when the King of Roumania in a telegram of
thanks which he sent to the Emperor William swore that the
peace would be definitive a diplomat unkindly
,
added defini
tive for the moment The Times comforted itself by reflecting:
.
The moment may be a long one. 1 The moment was not destined
to last long less than a year and a succession of incidents imme
warned the diplomatists that at any time
a third Balkan
diately
war might break out in the South-East of Europe. In that event
would the miracle of the months which had just passed be re
peated and the Great Powers continue to be neutral?

Throughout the winter and the following spring the question
of Albania caused anxiety to the Governments of Europe. For
this petty barbarian state was their work, created to keep the
Serbians from the sea and prevent the Austrians and Italians from
coming to blows. Its frontiers must now be drawn, the Serbian
on the north, the Greek on the south. The task was entrusted to
two international commissions. On both commissions the attitude
of the British members was strictly impartial. The English mem
ber of the commission appointed to demarcate the northern
frontier openly professed himself in favour of a rapprochement, if
not an actual alliance, between England and Germany and refused
all the
suggestions for common action made by the French and
Russian commissioners: England he said, desired a friendly
,
2
understanding with all nations. The English member of the
southern frontier commission was, like his wife, a keen traveller,
delighted with the prospect of hunting in the Albanian mountains.
Government he explained, cared only for one thing, that
"His
,
peace should be preserved in the Balkans, he did not care in the

least whether Albania was a little 3
larger or a little smaller. Never
theless incidents ensued of a nature to disturb the
sangfroid of the
British Government and its agents. On October i8th the Austrian
Government called upon Serbia to evacuate within a week areas
1
The Times, August n, 1913.
2
Commander von LafFert, German member of the commission delimiting the northern
frontier of Albania to Bethmann-Hollweg, November 14, 1913 (Die Grosse Politik .vol.
. .
xxxvi, p. 223).
3
Commander Thierry, German member of the commission delimiting the southern
frontier of Albania to Bethmann-Hollweg, September 4, 1913 (ibid., vol. xxxvi, p. 140).
644
which Europe had assigned to Albania. Threatened with an
Austrian invasion the Serbian Government submitted. Grey made
energetic protests to the Austrian Government. What need of
this bellicose and isolated action when the peaceful pressure of the
1
Great Powers acting in concert would have been sufficient?
The Austrian ultimatum was a serious matter. For in the present
instance Austria s action was taken with the approval and en
couragement of Germany, withheld on previous occasions. The
very day the ultimatum was despatched, the Emperor William,
celebrating at Leipzig amid a vast concourse of spectators the
centenary of the Battle of the Nations, held a long conversation
with Field-Marshal Conrad von Hotzendorf in which he main
2
tained Austria s right to destroy Serbia. At Vienna a week later
he expressed himself still more strongly to the sarae effect. A
3
week later still in a conversation with the King of the Belgians at

Berlin he made it plain that in his opinion a European war was
imminent and inevitable. 4 In short, for the first time, instead of
holding the Austrian Government back or following it reluctantly
when it took a step likely to lead to war, Berlin encouraged
Vienna to pursue a bellicose policy. London indeed knew nothing
of this. The newspapers devoted very little space to the Austrian
ultimatum. 5 The Irish question, which had reached an *cute stage,
material to fill
occupied public attention and provided ample
their columns. But at Petersburg this new success won by Austria
at the expense of the Southern Slavs aroused the anger of the Pan-
1
Von Kiihlmann to the Minister for Foreign Afiairs. London, October 20, 1913
(Die Grosse Politik . . . vol. xxxvi, p. 407).
2 Conrad von
Hotzendorf, Aus Meiner Dienstzeit, vol. in, pp. 49$ sqq.
8
S. Berchtold. Account of a conversation with the German Emperor William
n on
October 28, 1913 (dsterreich-Ungams Aussenpolitik . . . voL vii, pp. 512 sqq.).
4 Baron vol. ii, pp. 38 sqq. Ct Jules
Beyens, Deux Annees & Berlin 1912-1914, 1921,
Cambon to the Minister for Foreign Affairs, November 22, 1913 (Ministere des affaires
Documents diplomatique* 1914. La Guerre europeenne, vol. i, p. 20).
etrangeres.
6 In its number of October 21 the Daily Telegraph speaks of the high-handed action of
the Austrian Government which I have good reason to add, was strongly backed, if not
while deploring the methods adopted by
encouraged, by the Berlin Government but,
issue of the
Austria expressed its pleasure that Serbia had yielded thus ensuring a peaceful
conflict. Both The Times and the Mancliester Guardian informed their
readers of the ulti
matum without comment and devoted a leader to the anniversary of the Battle of Leipzig.
an
The only difference between the two papers was that the Manchester Guardian gave
a
entire column to the commemoration of the Battle. The Observer of the ipth published
from Vienna in five lines without comment and a leading article on the Leipzig
despatch
celebrations. The Sunday Times (October 19 and 26) treated the
matter with the utmost
sangfroid. Russia and Austria were agreed
and Serbia could no longer exploit tiieir
duTerences. Thus ends the latest, and probably the last, trouble arising
out of the Balkan
Wars, for an eventual understanding between Greece

and Turkey is also confidently
expected.
645
who thought themselves entitled to demand their revenge
Slavists,
when, on November 6, it became known that the Turkish
Government had invited to Constantinople to act as instructor
of the Turkish army and take command of a division in the capital
itself, the German General Liman von Sanders.
The Prussian public called upon a Cabinet which the more fiery
patriots had long blamed for excessive complaisance towards the
Central Empire -to take action in face of this new German en
croachment. This time Kokovtsoff did not dare to ignore public
opinion, and the Ministers under the pressure of the Pan-Slavists,
who found a champion in Sazonov even considered though
they finally rejected it the suggestion of armed intervention in
Asia Minor. 1 The ambassadors of the three Entente Powers jointly
asked the Porte to revoke a step which gave Russia legitimate
cause for complaint. But if the German Government gave way
it was not to avoid
offending Great Britain. For it was obviously
only for form s sake that she took part in the Russian protest.
British public opinion was still completely indifferent to events
in the Balkans and Grey s hands were further tied by the face that
the Turkish Government as a counterpoise to German influence
had just given the command of the fleet to a British Admiral. 2
The German Government yielded because it did not want a pro-
German Government out of office, as was
at Petersburg turned
likely to happen weakened. Liman

if its prestige were persistently
von Sanders kept the training of the Turkish army in his hands.
But the Turkish Government raised him to the rank of a Field
Marshal. This made it impossible for him to remain in command
of a division in Constantinople and the Russians were satisfied.
This question had no sooner been settled when the Albanian
1
Die Crosse vol. xxxviii, pp. 191 sqq. M. Pokrowski, Drei Konferenzen (Zwr
Politik . . .
Vorgeschichte desKreiges) 1920, pp. 32 sqq. The project of military action, this time in the
Dardanelles, was again examined by the Russian Government on February 21, 1914. But
it was not a step to be taken immediately. It was a
plan of campaign against Turkey in the
supposition of a European war already begun. (M. Pokrowski, Drei Konfernzen . . .
pp. 46 sqq.) In fact the chief of staff refused to consider the suggestion, which he said
would unduly divide the armed forces of Russia, which must be employed wholly
against Germany. This was what actually happened. Russia had not sufficient strength to
make an attack on the Dardanelles from the north, and left it to
England to make the
attack, with French help, from the south, how unsuccessfully we know.
2
MensdorfT. Report from London, December 17, 1913 When I called on Sir Edward
:
Grey yesterday to take leave our conversation touched upon the German Military Mission
to Constantinople. The Secretary of State remarked that is one of the most uncomfort
"it
able questions we have to deal with"/ (Osterreich-Ungarns Aussenpolitik . . . vol. vii, p.

663 .) On this affair of General von Sanders see Sir
George Buchanan, My Mission to
Russia, vol. i, pp. 148-150.
646
question began once more to preoccupy the diplomatists. This

time it was
a question not of the frontier between Serbia and
Albania, but of the frontier between Albania and Greece. Grey,
shaking off for once his inertia, suggested a settlement by which
Greece would be enabled to make in Albania the territorial con
cessions demanded of her without loss of prestige, because in re
turn Turkey would abandon to her the islands of the Archipelago.
It was an imprudent proposal. It did not succeed in
putting an end
to the conflict between Albania and Greece, for in March Epirus
revolted against the Albanian Government and it aggravated the
conflict between Greece and Turkey at the very time when the
persecution of the Greeks in Thrace and Asia Minor by the Turks
was becoming more severe. At one moment towards the middle
of June war seemed imminent. Finding it impossible to persuade
the Powers to take concerted action to put pressure upon Turkey,
Grey, weary of the Balkan imbroglio, contemplated standing
aside altogether and leaving affairs in the Near East to take their
1
course. But it was impossible to stand aside from a dispute which
might result in closing the Dardanelles to British commerce. And

was it so certain that a third Balkan war would be confined to
Greece and Turkey? Would not Bulgaria and Roumania inter
vene? And in their train the Great Powers? Once more Grey
spoke the language of 1912 and 1913 and sought the best method
of localizing the conflict. 2
Once more the danger was staved off, but only that the Adriatic
might again become the focus of attention. The Powers had
undertaken not only to draw the frontiers of the new state of
Albania but to provide it with a government and constitution.
They chose as King, a German, Prince von Wied. But he was
unable to establish an effective sovereignty over the country. The
whole of Albania was in revolt. Besieged in Durazzo the King
1
See already MensdorfF Report for London, February 13, 1914: It may well be dis
appointment at the course of events in Constantinople together with a certain weariness
of spirit which has prompted Sir Edward Grey during the last few days to consider the
possibility of withdrawing
and keep open the possibility of doing so. Ever since my return
the Foreign Secretary has shown, I have noticed, an increasing "lassitude". He is con
stantly using such language
as am sick to death of the whole thing *. The domestic
"I
situation and many other questions make large drafts upon his time and strength, and he
last proposals would have
had, I believe, entertained the confident expectation that his
settled the of Albania and the islands so far as the Powers are concerned/
questions
. . . vol. vii, pp. 866-7.)
(QsterrdcMJngarns Aussenpolitik
2 Memorandum communicated by the British Ambassador, June 17, 1914 (Die Grosse
Politik . . . voL xxxvi, pp. 817-8).
647
opportunity to take refuge on board

was watching his a British
man-of-war, whose presence in these waters had no other pur

What was to be done? Give him the necessary troops to
pose.
enforce his sovereignty? Not one of the Great Powers was pre
least of all. Substitute for his govern
pared to do this, England
ment an Austro-Italian condominium of Austria and Italy? But
in Albania nothing short of a war was being waged between the
agents of the two Powers, and the supporters

of the Prince von
Wied accused Italy of fomenting the insurrection of Albania
against a ruler too friendly to Germany
and Austria. Leave the
Albanians to settle their own fate, the Powers being content to
guarantee their territorial integrity? But how could this integrity

be guaranteed against an eventual invasion by the Serbs or Greeks
except by that use offeree to which England would not consent?
Meanwhile the situation in Albania became worse every day. On
June 27 the Austrian Government communicated to its Ambassa
dor in Rome the text of an ultimatum addressed to the Italian
Government demanding the immediate recall of the Italian Con
sul at Durazzo. The same day a recruiting agency was opened in
Vienna to enlist volunteers to support Prince von Wied. Would
the third Balkan war break out in Albania and take the form of a
war between Austria and Italy?
It wasunlikely. Germany had too much interest in settling the

dispute, and preventing a war which began with a split in the
Triple Alliance. But before the situation could be cleared up or
further embroiled in Albania, a conflagration was kindled a little
farther to the north, where the diplomats did not expect it, be
cause the occasion did not come within their competence. It was
not a question of foreign policy in the technical sense but of
domestic. It was an episode which occurred within Austria-Hun
itself.
gary
In fact, the domestic problems of the Austro-Hungarian
monarchy hardly differed, if the diplomatists had viewed them
in the right light, from the problems with which they were pro
fessionally concerned. For the struggle here was not between
different classes of a single nation, but between nations within a
648
composite State. Two races shared power and oppressed a minor

ity of subject races, Czechs, Slovaks, Slovenes, Croats, and Serbs.
As time went on, their discontent grew. The more intense it be
came, the stronger became the temptation felt by the two Govern
ments, particularly the Hungarian, to settle the problem by force.
All Europe was ringing with the story of the Agram trial and the
documents forged by the Austrian police to secure the condem
nation of the accused by a Hungarian court.
How are we to explain the increasing strength of national feel
ing within the Dual Monarchy? In the first place by the progress
of democratic institutions. Universal suffrage had been introduced
in Austria, the franchise considerably extended in Hungary. In
consequence the disorder which prevailed in the legislatures be

came worse every year. In the Bohemian Diet the obstruction
the Germans had reached such a pitch that it became
practised by
necessary to dissolve the Diet at the close of 1913. In revenge the
Czechs organized such powerful obstruction in the Parliament at
Vienna that in March 1914 the sittings had to be adjourned inde
finitely.
For if in the states of Northern and Western Europe
democracy meant international Socialism, in the South-East of
Europe it meant national independence. In the former rebellion
was rebellion against war. In the latter it was war hence the
second reason why the domestic situation in Austria became so
grave at this juncture, the recent events in the Balkans. The prin
ciple of nationality
re-awakened in Asia had just destroyed the
Ottoman Empire. Pursuing its revolutionary and fanatical course
it was now issuing from the Balkan peninsula and invading the
Danube basin, where it threatened to destroy in turn the Austro-

Serbs exercised
Hungarian monarchy. Three million emancipated
the six million Yugo-Slavs under the dominion of Austria
upon
the same attraction Piedmont had exercised upon the rest of Italy
half a century before. At Belgrade there was a widespread desire
for war, but many Serbians believed that the unification of the
Southern Slavs would be achieved without fighting. Within the
next three or four years the Austro-Hungarian empire would have
broken up and the Serbs of Bosnia, the Croats and Slovenes would
peacefully unite
with Serbia. 1
s account of a conversation with the Emperor
of Russia on
1
See Sir George Buchanan
April, 14, 1913 The Emperor spoke of Austria without any bitterness, but as a source of
:
to the fact that Germany was
weakness to Germany and as a danger to peace, owing that the
bound to support her in her Balkan policy. He fiarther expressed the opinion
649
Threatened by the revolt of their Slav subjects, the Germans in
Austria were naturally led to draw closer to their brethren in
Germany. A
species of
fusion was effected between the organiza
tions and institutions of the two countries churches, political
parties, universities,
and armies. Only court circles still
displayed
national independence and saw dis
anxiety to safeguard
"with
Germans look up to the German.

pleasure the Austrian Emperor
as the head of their race. The courts apart, the two states composed
a single nation, as Austria-Hungary on the other hand was a
nations. Nor did the Germans of
single state composed of several
Austria simply ask the Germans of Germany to come to their
were endangered by an
help if the integrity of Austria-Hungary
internal revolt. An entire party led by the Chief of Staff of the
Austrian army, Marshal Conrad von Hotzendorff, advocated an
offensive against Serbia and the conquest of that country. Once
annexed, Serbia would be absorbed in a Yugo-Slav longdoin
under the sovereignty of the Emperor Francis-Joseph. The dual
system of Austria-Hungary would be replaced by triple system,
a
Austrian, Magyar, and Yugo-Slav, and the Greater Serbia thus.

called into existence by the action of Austria would henceforward
be a bulwark against the anti-Austrian Pan-Serbs of Belgrade,
But the stroke would certainly have a repercussion in Roissia, and
it was at this
point that the Austrians counted on the German army,
perhaps to intimidate Russia and prevent her from declaring war
on Austria, but more probably to make war on Russia. The plan
of such a war had been in existence for many years past. It would
open with a march on Paris through Belgium. Then when the
French army had been wiped out and Germany s western frontier
was secure, a inarch on Petersburg or Moscow would follow. But
if the first part of the plan were carried out and Germany reduced
France and Belgium to subjection, what would England do?
disintegration of the Austrian Empire was merely a question of time, and that the day
was not far distantwhen we should see a kingdom of Hungary and a kingdom of Bohe
mia. The Southern Slavs would probably be absorbed by Serbia, the Roumanians of
Transylvania by Rournania, and the German provinces of Austria incorporated in Ger
many. The fact that Germany would then have no Austria to inveigle her into a war
about the Balkans would, His Majesty opined, make for peace. I ventured to observe that
such a recasting of the map of Europe could hardly be effected without a general war. (Afy
Mission to Russia^ vol. i, p. 182.)
650
9
While the two Balkan wars were in progress, a few isolated

voices had been raised from time to time in the Press in an attempt
to make the British public realize the serious danger to the peace
of Europe presented by the domestic situation of Austria-Hun
1 An eminent
gary. journalist, Wickham Steed, The Times* corre
at Vienna, in a work on the Austro-Hungarian monarchy
spondent
which was widely read, pointed out how enormously it had been
weakened by the Serbian victories of 1912 and 1913, and that all
the Germans were being drawn closer together in face of the
Slavonic peril. In conclusion he suggested the possibility that
Austria and Germany might attempt to meet it by embarking on
a war with Russia, which if the two Central Empires were vic
torious would result in their aggrandisement at the cost of Russia,
if they were defeated, would mean the end of the Austrian Empire,
2
and perhaps of the German also at least in its present form . It
was an interesting prophecy from the pen of the man who at the
end of 1913 would take charge of the foreign news department of
The Times and make the policy of the paper more decisively anti-
German than it had been for several months. But if he was deter
mined to and make his country champion the cause of
champion
the Slavs against the Germans those among his fellow countrymen
who had made a special study of the problems affecting the peace
of the Continent were by no means unanimously of his opinion.
Seton Watson, who of all the English had studied most thoroughly
the Slavonic question in Austria-Hungary, was strongly opposed
to Pan-Serb ambitions. He regarded the absorption of Croatia
and Slovenia in a Greater Serbia of which Belgrade would be the
capital as
a defeat of the West by the East, that is to say, of civili
zation by barbarism. A severe critic of the administrative methods
employed by Austria and Hungary in Yugo-Slavia he dedicated
1
See especially in theRound Table June 1913 (vol. iii, pp. 395 sqq.) the excellent article
"The Balkan War and the Balance
entitled of Power*.
but one of the
3
Henry Wickham Steed, The Habsburg Monarchy, 1913, P- ^94 (last page
are best left out of account in
book). He continues, it is true: But catastrophic hypotheses
that defeat could hardly fail to
these days of intertwined interests and of armies so colossal
con
be attended by revolutions fatal to thrones and to the existing social order; and calm
to the conclusion that the
sideration of the complicated factors involved leads rather
of escape from its difficulties into a more pros
Habsburg Monarchy has but one sure way
perous and tranquil future the way
of evolution, gradual or rapid as circumstances may
better adapted than the Dual System to the
permit, towards an internal organization
permanent needs of its people/
651
his book To that Austrian statesman who shall possess the genius
and the courage necessary to solve the Southern Slav question.

What solution did the author envisage? Apart from the conquest
of Serbia it resembled closely the triple system advocated by the
1
followers of Marshal von Hotzendorff. Other writers went even
further. In his book The War of Steel and Gold Brailsford attacked
Grey s policy for encouraging Russia too much and paralysing

the action of Austria in the Balkans. He regretted that she had
not been allowed during the last five years to annex Serbia and
the greater part of Macedonia. 2 Brailsford no doubt was an
extreme anti-capitalist and pacifist. But an eminent publicist of
much more moderate opinions, Sir Harry Johnson, a Liberal
imperialist and retired colonial governor, professed on Austria s
Balkan policy opinions identical with Brailsford s. 3 He even con
?
templated the possibility of the struggle between the Yugo-Slavs

and Austria-Hungary provoking a European war and maintained
that in that event British sympathies should be with the Germans
against the Russians and French.

Such were the conclusions of those Englishmen who interested
themselves in the problem of Austria-Hungary. They were diver
gent but there can be no doubt that the majority of those who
made a special study of the question were sympathetic to German
aims in Central and South-Eastern Europe. We
must remember
that during the years immediately preceding 1914 the Russian
empire was regaining in the opinion of the West almost all the
prestige ithad possessed before the disastrous war with Japan.
Once more it was
fomenting trouble in Mongolia and in Persia,
where the Russian penetration was directly opposing the British.
In the Balkans the Czar s Government had displayed a moderation
which the Pan-Slavs found intolerable, but it had begun to reassert
itself in the affair of Liman von Sanders. Russia was strengthening
her army, building Dreadnoughts, and doing everything which
lay in the power of her Government to do to persuade Europe
1 R. "W. Seton
Watson, Tke Southern Slav Question and the Habsburg Monarchy, 1911,
pp. 335 sqq. See by the same author, Corruption and Reform in Hungary. A Study ofElectoral
Practice, 1911. Absolutism in Croatia, 1912.
*
A
H. N. Brailsford, The War of Steel and Gold. Study of the Armed Peace, 1914, pp. 33-4.
3
Sir Harry Johnson, Common Sense in Foreign Policy, 1913, pp. 48 sqq. It must be added
that In the opening pages of his book (pp. 15-16) Sir Harry mentioned among the possible
events on the Continent which would justify England in declaring war upon Germany
any violation of the independence of Belgium or an attack upon the territorial integrity
of France. But for that very reason he disliked the solidarity it was sought to establish
between the policy of France and England and the policy of Russia.
652
that she had banished the peril of revolution. But as she became
or appeared to become stronger the
question arose whether the
maintenance of the European balance of
power required a victory
of the German or the Russian army in the
plains of Hungary and
Poland. 1 It was therefore only under considerable difficulties and
almost in secret, careful to avoid giving offence to a considerable
section of public opinion, whose
arguments could not be lightly
dismissed, that the Foreign Office remained faithful to the
policy
of the Triple Entente. We
must however remember that only a
handful of Englishmen took an interest in these
questions of
Eastern Europe, that the attitude of the
general public towards
the Austrian question, as towards the Turkish the
year before,
was one of indifference, and that its attention was now more
completely absorbed by the increasing gravity of the domestic
situation.
For in the United or Disunited Kingdom of Great Britain
and Ireland the principle of nationality was operating as disas
trously as in Austria-Hungary and in the spring of 1914 the Irish
question reached, as we already know, a critical phase. The Ger
man military law of 1913 and the French and Russian replies
which it provoked had not shaken British apathy. The law had
even had the paradoxical result, of which we have already had
occasion to speak, of improving Anglo-German relations. The
more money Germany spent on her army, the less she could spend
on her navy. In this state of somnolent perplexity the British
public watched witkjndifference the Government declare that it
was bound by no military pledge to France, couching its declara
tion in terms sufficiently ambiguous to permit it to maintain
contact with the French staff, Lloyd George advocate a rapproche-
1
Her (Russia s) efforts to improve her army may distract Germany s attention from
naval development there is no doubt that Russia is spending huge sums on a new fleet.
It may well be though it would be idle to prophesy one way or the other that in a few
years* time the balance of power will be threatened, no longer by Germany but by the
advancing strength of Russia. The chief danger then would be no longer the German
menace in the North Sea but the Russian advance in Asia Minor, Persia or Northern
China. ("The Balkan War and the Balance of Power, Round Table* June 1913, vol. iii,
p. 423.) See further the curious article published in the Daily Chronicle ofJuly 29, 1914, on
the eve of the Great War, the day after the Austrian declaration of war on Serbia (die writer
is the Sir Harry Johnson of whose book we have just spoken) *. : .. We should like to see
all participants in the great renaissance of Eastern Europe happy and contented and satis
fied as to their ambitions. But if they are not, and are about to resort to the arbitrament
of arms to adjust their claims, well, it should be no concern of ours, provided it did not
lead to two developments the aggrandisement of Russia in Europe or the defeat of
France by Germany, with a consequent German irruption into Belgium and Holland.*
653
went with Germany, Churchill reinforce the British fleet, the
Parisian crowd cheer King George, and a British squadron on its
return from Cronstadt pay an official visit to thd Emperor William
in Kiel Harbour. Whether it were a
question of the social problem
at home, of Irish Home Rule, or of the balance of power in
Europe the British put their trust more or less consciously in that
method of keeping cool and doing nothing which for two cen
turies of national greatness had served it so well in all matters of
domestic policy. Only keep cool and wait till crises settled them
selves. A few months or a few years patience and everything
would come right. Were not the Balkan wars a proof that British
sangfroid was as successful in foreign as in internal politics ? England
had Powers an example of calm, they had followed it and
set the
the Balkan had not become a European war. There was no reason
to foresee in the course of the next few months any disturbance
equally serious. The British, who wanted to be optimistic, found
in the events of 1912 and 1913 excellent reasons to justify their
optimism.
10
It was at this moment on June 28 that a wholly

unexpected
event happened. The Archduke Francis-Ferdinand, heir to the
throne of Austria, visited that day the city of Serajevo, the capital
of Bosnia and Herzegovina. He was believed to favour the
annexationist views of Marshal von Hotzendorff, and his visit to
Bosnia wore the appearance of a challenge to Belgrade. For he
had chosen for a military review the anniversary of the day on
which the great Serbia of the Middle Ages had been overthrown
by the Turkish army 1111389. While the Prince and his wife were
driving through the streets of Serajevo two attempts were made
upon their lives, the second of which was successful. The two
assassins were Bosnians, but both had come from Serbia, their
weapons from Serbian depots. Obviously they were emissaries
of a secret society known as the Black Hand which if openly at
,
war with the Government of Belgrade, intimidated and black

mailed it, and the Court in particular. It had been members of
this society who
only a few years before by the double murder
of the last of the Obrenoviches and his wife had seated the Kara-
georgevitches on the throne. Now once more they were attracting
654
the attention of the whole of Europe
by another double assassi
nation even more sensational than the former.
The Serbs were not popular in England. The crime of 1903 had
provoked an outburst of indignant horror. Alone the among
sovereigns of Europe King Edward had refused to enter into dip
lomatic relations with King Peter until he had
agreed to banish
from his Court the leaders of the plot which had traced him on
the throne at the cost of regicide. Only two at
papers, politically
the opposite poles, expressed after the murder of the Archduke
distrust of Austria. One was the
Tory Morning Post, the other the
Labour Daily Citizen, a paper with no circulation and the organ
of a party which was as yet an opposition with no chance what
ever of holding office. With practically no other exceptions the
entire Press declared it
perfectly justifiable for Austria to require
the Serbian Government to take all the
necessary steps to prevent
the recurrence of similar outrages. They expressed the hope that
the latter would take the initiative in opening an inquiry. 1 The
direction in which the wind was blowing in England can be
gauged from the articles written in July by the demagogue
Bottomley for his weekly John Bull. For years he had never been
weary of demanding the destruction of the German fleet. Now he
felt himself in no danger of disgusting his readers when he de
manded every week with equal vehemence the annihilation of
Serbia.
Was
the British public then blind to the possible repercussions
of the of June 28; that the double murder might
assassination
prove the signal for the Slavs of Austria-Hungary to revolt

against Austrian and Magyar oppression, and battle be joined
between Teutons and Slavs throughout Central Europe? We
know that the German Ambassador, Lichnowsky, urged by his
superiors to take every step in his power to ensure the neutrality

of British statesmen and journalists, never ceased to warn his
2
Government against excessive optimism, and at first sight the
1
For the views voiced by the Press between che assassination at Serajevo and the decla
ration of war see the excellent work by Irene Cooper Willis, How we went into the War, A
Study of Liberal Imperialism [1919]. Jonathan Frank Scott, Five Weeks. The Surge of Public
Opinion on of the Great War, 192,7, chap, ix; Caroline E. Playne, ThePre-War Mind
the Eve
inEngland an Historical Review, 1928; and in particular for the policy of The Times,
,
H. Wickham. Steed, Through Thirty Years, 1892-1922, A

Personal Narrative, vol. ii, pp.
I sqq.
2 to the Minister for Foreign Affairs, July 14, 1914 (Die Deutschen Doku-
Lichnowsky
mente . , , vol. i, p. 68) July 15, 1914 (ibid., p. 77).
VOL \ 123 655

language used by Grey in his conversations with Lichnowsky

during the first fortnight of July seems marked by a certain ner
vousness. Grey counted on Germany to press a circumspect policy
on Vienna and wanted the two Governments of London and
Berlin to unite in the same conciliatory action which they had
taken with such success on several occasions during the Balkan
crisis.
The greater the risk of war/ Grey informed Lichnowsky on

July 9, the more closely would I adhere to that policy. 1 And
indeed was obvious to anyone who understood the situation
it
that the risk was greater than it had ever been during the Balkan
wars. It was then a question of conflicts between the Balkan States
in which all the Great Powers without exception including Aus
tria declined to be mixed
up. Now the third Balkan war so
dreaded in London threatened to open with a struggle between a
Balkan state and one of the Great Powers. How could the rest be
prevented from following Austria s lead? But we have only to
look a little closer to see how little at this date Grey realized the
gravity of the situation.
His interviews with the German Ambassador after the assassi
nation continued others which had taken place before it and
throughout them all his principal concern was to appease the
indignation aroused in Berlin by the publication of the negotia
tions for a naval agreement between England and Russia. No
doubt the murder at
Serajevo complicated the international situa
tion,but the English were far from ascribing to it the importance
we should imagine today. On the very morrow of the assassina
tion the House of Commons held a debate on
foreign policy. It
was a hurried affair, and the audience scanty and unattentive.
The one question which aroused a little more interest than the
others was the dispute between England and Russia in Persia. 2
1
Sir Edward Grey to Sir K. Rumb old, July 9, 1914 (British Documents vol. xi, p. 34. . .
sqq.). The phrase we have quoted is not to be found in Lichnowsky s report of this con
versation which he concludes with the following words: Generally
speaking the minister s
mood was one of confidence and in cheerful tones he assured me that he saw no reason to
take too tragic a view of the situation* (Lichnowsky to
Bethmann-Hollweg, July
9, 1914;
Die Deittschen Dokumente zum Kriegsattsbruck, vol. i, p. 52).
2
Parliamentary Debates, Commons 1914, 5th Series, vol. Ixiv, pp. 53 sqq. See especially
the following Statement by the pacifist Noel Buxton: *It is
pleasant in a time of consider
able international difficulties in many parts of the world to
congratulate the Foreign Secre
tary to-day upon the fact that matters which are likely to be raised are not questions of
haute politique at all, but they are
comparatively minor questions not involving matters of
great danger (ibid., p. 59).
656
Colonel House was in London. The warlike spirit lie had observed
in government circles in Berlin even before the murder of the
Archduke had caused him serious anxiety, but he was unable to
communicate his fears to Grey. 1 And what was true of Grey was
true of his subordinates. 1 have my doubts wrote Sir Arthur ,
Nicolson on July 9, as to whether Austria will take any action of

2
a serious character, and I expect the storm will blow over/ The
British representative in Sofia to be sure feared another Balkan
war in the near future, but by this near future he meant October
and what Sir Henry Bax-Ironside expected about October was a
declaration of war by Turkey on Greece; Austria would remain
at peace so long as the Emperor lived.
3
When after a short holiday
Sir Francis Bertie returned to Paris, his instructions mentioned
4 a visit to the Czar. He was
only Albania. President Poincare paid
the Russian Government to restrain its
expected to persuade
in Persia. And that was all.
5
agents encroachments
The days passed by and the Austrian Government took no
action at Belgrade. Tisza addressing the Parliament at Budapest
People were beginning not so much
used to
reassuring language.
fear the possible stringency of the Austrian demands as to feel
were asking themselves
surprise at her longsuffering. They
whether Baron von Aehrenthal by his violent stroke in 1908 had
not given Europe a false impression of the real power of the
Austro-Hungarian monarchy and whether
now that he had dis
it would not prove incapable of meeting
appeared from the scene
the dangers by which it was threatened at home and abroad and
these circumstances the English did
begin to break up. Under
what they most of all wanted to do stood aside from the racial
Danube valley* They had sufficient trouble of their
conflict in the
own to face when the Irish Catholics and Protestants were arming
against each other
and the Lords were mutilating so severely the
measure of compromise to which the Cabinet had with the
1 I tried to convey this feeling
Colonel House to President Wilson, July 31, 1914:
to Sir Edward Grey and other members of the British Government. They
seemed aston
ished at pessimistic view
my and thought that conditions were better than they had been
for a long time. (The Intimate Papers of Colonel House, vol. i, p. 283).
2
In a note to a despatch sent by Sir Maurice de Bunsen from
Vienna on July 5 (British
Documents . . . vol. xi, p. 33)- , , . ,., . , ,
3
Private letter from Sir H. Bax-Ironside to Sir Arthur Nicolson, July 1914 (ibid., vol.
*
4 Sir Bertie to Sir Edward Grey, July 30, 1914 (ibid., vol. xi, p. 230).
F."
vol. xi,
6
Private letter from Sir G. Buchanan to Sir Arthur Nicolson, July 9, 1914 (ibL,
P- 39)-
L 657
greatest difficulty obtained the assent of the Irish Nationalists that
they seemed anxious to the conflict. The country was
precipitate
heading for civil war. How could it think of anything else? In a
speech which he delivered on July 17 at a banquet in the city and
to which we have
already had occasion ro allude Lloyd George
had taken for his theme peace, domestic and foreign, the "one
thing that is of paramount importance But he passed lightly over

.
the questions which concerned peace abroad, reminding his

hearers that the international situation had been more serious in
1913 and hinting that, if there were still clouds on the horizon,-
*y ou never get a perfectly
it was because blue sky in foreign
affairs He therefore urged a policy of disarmament and turning
.
to other matters enlarged

upon the imminent peril which threat
ened peace at home civil war in Ireland complicated by a general
1
revolutionary strike in Great Britain.
II
Two days after this speech an important German newspaper, in

fact the unofficial
organ of the Government, the Norddeutsche
Allgemeine Zeitung, published a communique which prepared
European opinion for a step to be taken immediately by the
Austrian Government. It
expressed the wish that the Serbian
Government would give Austria the satisfaction due to her and
Europe display the same solidarity she had shown during the
Balkan crisis and permit the issue between Austria and Serbia to
remain localized. Two things therefore were evident; on the one
hand that Germany had given carte blanche to Austria, on the other
that when the German Government invited the British, to take
joint action for the maintenance of peace as during the Balkan

wars, the two Powers did not attach die same sense to the propo
sition.Let us work together to preserve peace, said Grey, you by
urging moderation upon Austria, we by urging it upon Russia.
Let us work together, replied Von Jagow: prevent Russia inter
fering while Austria inflicts a richly deserved chastisement on
Serbia. 2
1
Speech at the Mansion House, July 17, 1914.
8 Von jagow to Prince Lichnowsky, Berlin, July 18, 1914
: Sir Grey [sic] is always speak
ing of the balance of power to be maintained by the two groups of Powers. He must
dearly understand that this balance would be totally destroyed if we abandoned Austria
658
Then the Foreign Offices
began to move. Grey proposed to
Petersburg direct negotiations between tte Russian and Austrian
Governments before the latter had committed itself
irretrievably.
But the suggestion was not welcomed in Russia and Poincare,
who had just arrived in Petersburg, proposed that the Ambassa
dors of the Triple Entente should make a
joint representation to
the Austrian Government. The was
proposal immediately rejec
ted in London. For it ran counter to the
policy the Foreign Office
had consistently pursued for the past two years, never to
oppose
to each other the two
groups, the Triple Entente and the Triple
Alliance. But all these
suggestions and conversations remained
secret. It was in vain that The Times, in a
magnificent leader, be
gan to warn its readers of the danger to which the Austrian policy
might within a few days expose the peace of Europe. The public
had other preoccupations. The more critical the European situa
tion became, the more critical also became the situation in Ireland.
It was on
July 21 that the King, in a desperate effort at conciliation,
summoned the representatives of the opposing parties, and on the
24th the readers of the British newspapers learned, one after the
other, two disastrous pieces of news. In the morning they were
informed of the despatch by Austria to Serbia- of a Ust of demands,
the last of which was tantamount to Serbia s renunciation of her
independence, to be accepted unconditionally within forty-eight
hours. A refusal would mean war. In the afternoon, they were
informed of the failure of the Buckingham Palace Conference,
which seemed to signify that Protestants and Catholics had no
other solution of the Irish problem than the arbitrament of force.
On the following day, a Saturday, the Serbian Government re
turned the Austrian a reply as conciliatory as was possible without
surrendering the rights of a sovereign state. But it was not the
unconditional acceptance which Austria demanded and the latter,
ashad been expected, immediately broke off diplomatic relations
with Serbia. On Sunday the gun-running at Howth occurred
with its loss of life. Europ.e was hastening towards a general war,
Ireland towards civil war.
Taken thus unawares in the middle of so serious a domestic
crisis by an even more serious international crisis, we might have
and left her to be destroyed by Russia and would be very considerably shaken by a world
war. If therefore he is logical and his intentions honourable he must support us and localize
the conflict." (Die Deutschen Dokumente
. .. vol. i,
p. 100.)
659
expected confusion to prevail in the counsels of the British

Government. There was nothing of the kind. The Cabinet, or
5
rather an inner Cabinet composed of Asquith, Grey, and

Churchill perhaps also sub rosa of Lord Haldane took with all
the necessary decision the military and diplomatic measures the

situation required.
In place of the extensive manoeuvres in the North Sea carried
out in former years Churchill had adopted this year a programme,
less costly but equally instructive, by which the third squadron
was mobilized and at the same time the three squadrons which
made up the home were concentrated in home waters.
fleet
20,000 reservists obeyed the summons and their period of

service which began on July 13 ended on the 25th. The German
naval command, anxious not to do anything to alarm the British
Admiralty and prevent at such a critical juncture the dispersal of
their immense force had ordered the German fleet to make no
movement1 and on the 26th the German spies were able to inform
the Government which employed them that its strategy had been
so far successful that the 20,000 reservists had returned home. 2
But the first and second squadrons remained concentrated at
Plymouth. Acting in concert with Grey, Churchill inserted a
communique in the papers on Monday morning which informed
England, Germany, and the entire world that the first squadron
would not leave Portland and that the vessels composing the
second squadron .would remain at their bases within call of
their crews. 3 England was thus the first of the Great Powers
with the exception of Austria to make ostensible preparations for
war.
Meanwhile Grey proposed to the various Governments that the
Powers not directly concerned in the dispute, Germany and Italy
in the Triple Alliance, England and France in the Triple Entente
should make an attempt to mediate. On Saturday he suggested
1
In contravention of the Emperor s instructions. Bethmann-Hollweg to the Emperor
July 25, 1914 (Die Deutschen Dokumente . vol. i,
. .
p. 193.) The Same to the Same, July 26,
1914 (ibid., vol. i, p. 211).
2
Memorandum by the Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs, Berlin, July 25, 1914: The
naval attache" in London reports : the fleet dispersed according to plan. So far as he knows
no extraordinary movements, (ibid., vol. i, p. 187.) The German naval attach^ in London
to the Minister of Marine, July 26, 1914 (ibid., vol. i, p. 211).
* For the text of the
communiqitt see Winston Churchill, The World Crisis i911-1914,
p. 198. Grey prudently explained to BenckendorfT that in preventing the dispersal of the
fleet hehad in view only diplomatic action. (Sir Edward Grey to Sir G. Buchanan, July 27,
1914; British Documents . . vol. xi, p. 211.)
.
660
joint
intervention four Powers at Petersburg and Berlin. 1
by the*
On Sunday accepting a slightly different proposal put forward by

2
Sazonov, he proposed at Nicolson s advice3 a conference, to be
held in London, of the German, French, and Italian Ambassadors
and himself to explore an amicable solution of the dispute. While
the conference was in session Austria must suspend all
military
operations. Rome accepted the suggestion. Paris also, through the
acting Premier, for the minister who was at once Premier and
Minister for Foreign Affairs, Viviani, was at sea hurrying home
from Cronstadt with President Poincare and out of touch with
events.But Berlin was hostile. This return to the methods em
ployed year before during the Balkan crisis would involve treat
a
ing not only Serbia but Austria-Hungary itself as a Balkan state
under the tutelage of the West. 4 Berlin was extricated from the
difficultyby Petersburg. On the morning of the 2yth the French
Ambassador, Paleologue, proposed to the British Ambassador
Buchanan, on behalf of Sazonov a different method of procedure
5
direct conversations between Russia and Austria-Hungary.
The German Government welcomed the new suggestion and
made use of it to reject the British proposal.
Grey s diplomacy had suffered an initial defeat. It suffered a
second, still more serious, the declaration of war by Austria on
Serbia, of which the Foreign Office was officially informed during
the night between Tuesday the 28th and Wednesday the 2pth and
which was followed immediately by the bombardment of Bel
grade. Again the British Government gave
the necessary orders.
In pursuance of a decision reached on the Tuesday morning and
to which Churchill had obtained Grey s assent the fleet sailed
through the Straits of Dover during the night with all fires
banked
and took up its station in Scottish waters at Scapa Flow in face of
theGerman fleet. On Wednesday Churchill despatched to all the
commands the warning telegram they had been expecting since
Monday ordering them to make all the necessary preparations
1 Sir Edward Grey to Sir George Buchanan, July 25, 1914. (British Documents . . . voL
xi, pp. 86-7).
2
Sir G. Buchanan to Sir Edward Grey, July 25, 1914 (ibid., vol. xi, p. 93).
3
A. Nicolson to Sir Edward Grey, July 26, 1914 (ibid., vol. xi, p. ipo).
Sir
4 Out of to the Austrian Ambassador
regard for Austrian susceptibilities Grey expressed
his regret at having used the word conference and explained that he had in mind only
from Mens-
meetings of ambassadors, similar to those held in 1913 (Telegraphic despatches
dorfF, July 28, 1914, and from Berchtold to MensdorfF same
date (Osterreich-Ungarns
Aussenpoiitik . . . vol. viii, pp. 839, 941)-

4 Sir
George Buchanan to Sir Edward Grey (British Documents . . . vol. xi, p. 125).
661
to begin war as soon as the order was received. 1 At the same time
he persuaded the Cabinet to take all the measures which in virtue
of decisions reached some years before by the Committee of
Imperial Defence were involved in the proclamation of a precau
tionary period, that is to say to issue, a series of instructions ad
dressed to the authorities concerned throughout the Empire
ordering immediate preparations for war. Grey now sent for

2
.
Lichnowsky and informed him, in a quite private and friendly
way and, without waiting for the Ambassador to question him

on the subject, that the situation was very grave and that if
Germany, and in consequence France, should be involved he
must not conclude from the friendly tone of their interview that
England would stand aside. If England believed that her interests
required her intervention she would intervene at once and her

decision would be no less rapid than those of the other Govern
ments. 3
12
On
the evening therefore of Wednesday, July 29, the British
Government had, it would seem, done
everything in its power,
openly and in secret, from the naval and diplomatic standpoint
alike to prepare for war and confront hostile powers with the
prospect of her entry into the war. But days of hesitation fol
lowed. Only four but to those who lived through them they
seemed an eternity. We
must be clear as to the nature and reasons
of this halt on the brink of the abyss.
What did most to mislead public opinion, not only in England,
but on the Continent was the imperturbable calm, the persistent
sangfroidwhich the British public maintained, when the entire
condition of Europe, political, financial, and military, proclaimed
1
Winston S. Churchill. The World Crisis, pp. 206-7.
a
Winston S. Churchill, ibid., p. 208 H. H. Asquith, The Genesis of War, p. 1 84 (cf. for the
;
Import of the steps taken pp. 118, 136). Field-Marshal Sir Henry Wilson s Diary, July 28
(29?), 1914: The Russians have ordered the mobilisation of 16 Corps. The Austrians are
mobilising 12 Corps. The Germans and French remain quiet. At 3 p.m. a note came to
Douglas from Asquith ordering the "Precautionary Period". This we did, I don t know
why we are doing it, because there is nothing moving in Germany. We shall see. Any
how it is more Hke business than I expected of this government/ (Major-General Sir
C. E. Callwell. Field-Marshal Sir Henry Wilson. 1927, vol. i, p. 152.)
3
Sir Edward Grey to Sir E. Goschen, July 29, 1914 (British Documents vol. xi, p.
. . .
182). Prince von Lichnowsky to the Minister for Foreign Affairs, July 29, 1914 (Die
Deutschen Dokumente . . . vol. ii, p. 86).
662
the catastrophe already begun. The annual holiday season had
commenced; for the workers the week-end would be exception
ally prolonged by the fact that the following Monday was a bank
holiday, and on Friday, and even on Saturday, while Russia,
Austria, Germany, and France were arming English holiday-
makers of every class were hastening to the stations and the
Channel ports in search of rest and pleasure. It was not surprising
that foreign observers concluded that the country had determined
to stand aside from the Continental war, and that Grey, who at
the beginning of the week had taken an extremely pessimistic
view of the situation, should shrink from taking action too far in
advance of an indifferent public opinion and consider how best to
restrain the warlike zeal of the Government departments, and that
pacifist
doctrinaires misinterpreted this calm as a determination
to maintain peace at any price and hugged the illusion that they
had the entire country on their side.
Certain signs however enable us to interpret more correctly the
temper of the nation. The minority of writers in the Press who
regarded it as inevitable that England should enter the war in sup
themelves cautiously and
port of Russia and France expresssed
took care not to adopt a censorious attitude towards the Cabinet.
On the other hand the measures of preparation for naval warfare
which had been already adopted by the Admiralty on Monday
morning had aroused no protest from the leading Liberal organs,
and the more direct measures taken by the Cabinet on Wednesday
were not made public by the indiscretion of anyj ournalist. Finally,
when the Irish Bill came up for discussion on Thurs
Amending
day, all the Conservatives, Liberals, and Labour members
parties
of Great Britain, the Ulstermen and the Irish Nationalists agreed
to adjourn the debate indefinitely, because, Asquith explained, it
was essential that the country, which has no interest of its own
a united front, and be able to
directly at stake, should present 1
and act with the authority of an undivided nation . In the
speak
no doubt there had been occasions when England had dis
past
In 1898 and 1899 for example
played a more belligerent temper.
public opinion
had pushed the Government into war. But the
country had now returned to its
normal state. Both instinctively
and deliberately the average Englishman distrusts the imagination.
1
H. of C-, July 30, 1914 (Parliamentary Debates, Commons 1914; 5& Series, vol. Ixv,
p. 1601).
663
He does not want to redouble a danger by the dread of it. So long
as the situation was in the hands of the diplomatists, it was a duty
to believe that they were sincere in their efforts to preserve peace,
a duty moreover to believe success possible and to contribute to
that possibility by giving the British Government the assistance
of calm and silence.
But this calm and silence were carried so far that they became a
hindrance instead of a help to the Government. There were
moments when Grey wondered whether it would be possible to
arouse the British public from its slumber and rally it to the cause
of the mother country by declaring war. This was one reason for
hesitation and even if it had not existed there were a host of
others, some common to all the Governments alike, others pecu
liar to the British.
There was in the first place a fear which all the Governments
felt and which made them shrink back when the moment arrived
to declare war, the fear of revolution. In the latter part of the nine
teenth century Karl Marx s great disciple and friend Friedrich
Engels had foretold *a world war provoked by Prussia-Germany*
of unsuspected length and violence during which eight to ten
million soldiers would slaughter each other and strip Europe bare
like a swarm of locusts . He predicted that the artificial structure
of commerce, industry, and finance would be destroyed and the
irreparable chaos result in general bankruptcy; the old states and
their traditional ideas would be overthrown, crowns would roll
by dozens on the pavement and no one would pick them up, and
the universal exhaustion would provide the conditions under
which the working class would at last achieve victory 1 Now, .
when Europe was at last threatened by the immediate prospect

of a general war, many people, judging from a considerable num
ber of signs the first Russian revolution, the propaganda of
revolutionary syndicalism, the growth of Marxian Socialism in
Germany were inclined to predict a world revolution in its train.
On the very eve of the Austrian ultimatum, while President
Poincare was visiting the Emperor of Russia, serious
rioting broke
out at Petersburg* with casualties extending to loss of life arid the
German Ambassador remarked with amusement that while the
band of the Imperial Guard greeted Poincare at Krasnoi6-Selo
1 Preface to a
pamphlet by Borkheim 1887 (quoted by Lenin). (Report on the Modifica
tions in the Party Programme, March 8, 1918, Works, vol. xv, French,
p. 149 tr.)
664
with the strains of the Marseillaise the workers of the
Petersburg
suburbs were receiving a charge of the Cossack cavalry to the
same accompaniment. 1 In Great Britain the syndicalist leaders had
indulged in too many outbursts of anti-patriotism not to alarm
the ruling class. Might not the reply to a war or the economic
crisis it would immediately provoke be that general strike of rail-
waymen, transport workers and miners which had been threatened
for months past? And must we not attribute to considerations of
this kind a share in the explicit declaration of neutrality made on
July 26 by King George to Prince Henry of Prussia? May not the

court have shrunk at first from being drawn into a revolutionary
war opened by a regicide? Be careful, Grey told the Austrian
Ambassador, MensdorfF, when on July 23 the Ambassador came to
prepare him for the despatch of the ultimatum, a general war would
be accompanied or followed by a complete collapse of European
credit and industry in these days in great industrial States. This would
2
mean a state ofthings worse than that of 1 848. , *In the present temper
of labour/ LordMorley warned his colleagues afew days later almost

in the same words, the atmosphere ofwar cannot be friendly to order,
3
in a democratic system that is verging on the humour of 48.
1
Count von Bethm ann-Hollweg. July 24, 1914 (Die Deutschen Dokumente
Pourtales to
. . . vol. i, Despatch by Count Berchtold, September 7-8, 1912: *In Baltic-
p. 207). Cf.
Port he had received the impression that Russia would pursue a peaceful policy for many
years to come. Herr Kokovtsov
had determined to carry out an extensive economic pro
which
gramme. Moreover the Russian Premier was convinced of the very serious dangers
in view of the social situation in Russia foreign complications would involve.* (Osterreich-
vol. iii, p. 415.) See further Prince von Biilow s Memoirs (French
Ungams Aussenpolitik . . .
trans., vol. ii, p. 291): In May 1914 in Rome I asked Kokovtsov the former Russian
Prime Minister who had just quitted office,, if he believed there would be a war and he
answered without hesitation: "War? No. Unless you compel us, * we will not go to war.
But I believe a revolution in Russia not only possible but likely."
2 Sir Edward
Grey to Sir Maurice de Bunsen, July 23, I9 J 4 (British Documents vol. . . .
xi, p. 70). Cf. MensdorrT telegram from London, July 23, 1914: He (Sir Edward Grey)
recognized the difficulty of our position
and spoke very seriously of the gravity of the
situation. If four great powers, Austria-Hungary, Germany, Russia and France became
involved in war, the consequence for all intents and purposes would be the bankruptcy
of Europe. more credit would be obtainable, and the centres of industry would be
No
plunged into a state of chaos, so that in many countries it would cease to matter which 1
side existing institutions had been swept away. (Osterreich-

was victorious when so many
vol. viii, p. 603.) For another summary of the same conversation
. . .
Ungarns Aussenpolitik
. . . vol. viii,
also by Mensdorff see his despatch ofJuly 29. (Osterreich-Ungarns Aussenpolitik
p. 878.) MensdorrT
concluded his despatch with the remark :^*It made a great impression
on German colleague, a nervous man at the best of times.
my
3
Viscount Morley. Memorandum on Resignation, p. 5. Cf. H. of C., August 3, 1914,
Starvation is in this country and the people are not the
coming
Wedgewood s speech:
docile serfs that they were a hundred years ago. They are not going to put up with starva
tion in this country. When it comes you will see something far more important than a
War you will see a revolution.* (Parliamentary Debates, Commons 1914; 5th
European
Series, vol. Ixv, p. 1838.)
665
But to this fear of revolution and revolutionaries which the
British Government shared with the government of every other
country there was added in England another anxiety which no

Continental government felt to the same degree, dread of seeing
the machinery of exchange paralysed and that vast republic of
commerce and finance collapse which in peace time knew nothing
of frontiers and was conterminous with the globe. On Tuesday
the 28th the crisis which had already played havoc with all the
exchanges of Europe reached the Stock Exchange and after it
closed prices fell still further on the news that Austria had declared
war on Serbia. After a slight recovery on Wednesday morning
the crisis went from bad to worse until on Friday the Stock
Exchange Committee decided to close the Exchange until further
notice. The supreme scandal had actually occurred which Norman
Angell had pronounced improbable, indeed practically impossible,

in the West warlike passion had triumphed over organized finan
cial interests. It was, it is true, an infection
caught from the East.
Might not England prove the last bulwark of Western civilization
against the plague? Had she not still time to take the necessary
steps to arrest its ravages at the Straits of Dover? While the
British public displayed to a tormented Europe the mask of their
impassivity, the business world took action. The aged Lord Roths
child led the movement. For years, the consistent champion of an
entente between England and Germany,1 he tried to bring pressure
to bear- upon the editorial staff of The Times, and upon his relatives
in Paris, 2 and he wrote to the Emperor William a letter of en
3
treaty, whose heartrending. And in addition to all this
naivete is
in an attempt to influence the British Government he

put himself
at the head of a deputation from the which called on Lloyd
City,
George on Friday morning to urge him by preserving the neu
trality of England at all costs to save the country from disaster and
possibly enable her to stretch out a helping hand to the Continent.
1 For a
period extending over nearly forty years I have been personally acquainted
with the different German ambassadors of the time, and this personal intimacy has allowed
me on more than one occasion to be of service to die respective governments. "What have
we . not got in common with Germany? Nothing perhaps except their army and our
. .
navy. But a combination of the most powerful military nation with the most powerful
naval nation ought to be such as to command the respect of the whole world, and ensure
universal peace. (Articles entitled England and Germany* in the collection which bears
the same name and which was published in 1912, pp. 21-3.)
2
Henry Wickham Steed, Through Thirty Years, vol. ii, p. 8.
8
Die Deiftschen Dokwnente .voL iii, pp. 77-8. The Emperor appended the note:
. .
An
old and honoured acquaintance of mine ! Between 75 and 80 years old !*
666
The choice of leader aroused protest. The Morning Post and The
Times depicted the crisis on the Stock Exchange as a device, en
gineered by the German-Jewish banks, to create a panic in the
business world and paralyse the
diplomatic and military action
of the Government, and at the Foreign Office itself Sir Eyre
Crowe repeated the legend. 1 But Lloyd George and Grey2 were
impressed by Lord Rothschild s action; if the City was opposed to
to war, would the country be in favour of it ?
We may add that in shrinking from the final decision the
British Government did but give evidence of the same alarm
which all the Governments of the Great Powers, with the excep
tion of Austria., felt at this juncture at the prospect of war as such
with its horrors and
dangers. The Emperor William, after urging
Austria forward for months, particularly during the last few
weeks and still scornful, while he cruised off the coast of Norway,
of Count Berchtold s delays, suddenly took alarm and returned
in haste to Berlin to embarrass the more warlike of his ministers,
his nervousness. President Poincare, who in
by Petersburg before
the Austrian ultimatum had done everything in his power to
draw closer the bond which united France with Russia and had
spoken in haughty terms to the Austrian Ambassador, had no
sooner returned to his native country after the ultimatum when
face to face with the immediate prospect of war he too became
anxious and timid. Grey, the impassive architect of the ambiguous
system of ententes, lost his impassivity when brutal realities com
3
pelled him to speak in terms which could not be misunderstood.
In every capital the same dialogue was held between the chiefs
of the army, the mouthpieces of fate, who demanded mobi
lization and the civil rulers who revolted against it and would fain
believe themselves still free to decide their courseof action. And
everywhere they submitted to fate, in Russia first, then in Ger
many, then in France, and finally in England. Is it surprising that
England was the last to submit? On the contrary, should we not
be surprised that her decision followed the French so closely? For
1
Memorandum by Sir Eyre Crowe, July 31, 1914 (British Documents . vol. xi, p. 228).
. .
2
See Grey s remarks to Paul Cambon on the sist: commercial and financial
"The
situation was exceedingly serious; there was danger of a complete collapse that would
involve us and every one else in ruin; and it was possible that our standing aside might be
the only means of preventing a complete collapse of European credit, in which we should
be involved. This might be a paramount consideration in deciding our attitude (Sir
Edward Grey to Sir F. Bertie, July 31, 1914: ibid., vol. xi, pp. 226-27).
* Harold Nicolson, Sir Arthur Nicolson, First Lord Camock, pp. 419, 422.
66?
her position was not the same as that of France. France had no
choice but to prepare with more or less haste, and more or less
efficiency for the inevitable day when Germany would declare
war upon her. It was on the other hand certain that Germany
would never declarewar on England. She would not allow
Russia to crush Austria-Hungary and had made up her mind to
crush France before attacking Russia. But she needed the neutral
ity of England. It was for the latter to abandon it, if she dared, by
taking the responsibility of declaring war. She would take it, it
was inevitable that she should: but it is one thing to submit to
fate, another to make oneself fate s active accomplice.
13
How are we to summarize the history of these breathless days?

On the evening of Wednesday the 29th, the very day on which
the news of the bombardment of Belgrade reached London, the
Foreign Office was officially informed that the Russian Govern
ment had decided upon a partial mobilization, while still holding
out against the wishes of the army which demanded a general
mobilization. On the 30th vague reports were received from
Germany that mobilization had begun or was at any rate immin

ent. On the 3 ist in the late afternoon the
Foreign Office was in
formed, almost simultaneously, that Russia had ordered a general
mobilization, that Austria had done the same, and that Germany
had declared a state of danger of war which constituted a pre
liminary mobilization. At the same time, the German Govern
ment despatched a double ultimatum, to Russia, calling upon her
to revoke within eighteen hours the order to mobilize and to
France, requiring her to pledge herself, within the same interval,
war would be declared on
to remain neutral. In case of refusal,
both fronts. On Saturday August i, almost at the same moment,
Germany and France ordered mobilization. Shortly afterwards,
Germany declared war on Russia.
Meanwhile, British diplomacy, though steadily retreating, per
sisted in seeking a peaceful solution of the
dispute between Austria
and Serbia. The Austrian army could no longer be
prevented from
occupying Belgrade. Even so, let the conquest go no further and
Belgrade be occupied merely as a pledge until Serbia had accepted
668
the Austrian terms and then be evacuated. It was no longer pos
sible to hope that the Austrian army would be content with the
occupation of Belgrade. Let it then advance farther but let Austria

the sovereignty of Serbia. The
promise to respect in the last resort
German Government gave an official promise to England not to

annex any European territory of France in the event of victory, to
respect the neutrality of Holland,
and to restore to Belgium her
territory intact, if she allowed the German army to cross it. On
these terms England had only to pledge herself to remain neutral
and a general pact of neutrality might be concluded between the
two nations. Grey refused even to consider these promises. But
three days later he aroused vain hopes in the mind of the German
Emperor and his Chancellor by letting it be known that, if only
Germany would abstain from attacking France, England would
not intervene. On Thursday, Paul Cambon called at Downing
Street to remind him of the letters exchanged in October 1912,
and the undertaking then given by the British Government to act
in concert with the French and deliberate in common upon the
joint
measures to be adopted by both Powers if the peace of
Europe were seriously endangered. The following day,
when the
had been discussed by the Cabinet, Grey replied that the
question
Government could not at the moment bind itself by any pledge.
The same evening a special messenger brought King George an
autograph letter from President
Poincare calling upon England
tocome to the aid of France in her danger. A long and courteous,
but guarded, reply ended with the words: *E vents change so
to foresee their future developments/
quickly that it is impossible
They changed quickly indeed. The deputation from the City to
truth the first sign that the cham
Lloyd George on Friday was in
were beginning to perceive that they no longer
pions of neutrality
had the entire country behind them. And their anxiety must have
been increased when they saw the Secretary for War calling up
the special reserve, armed sentries making their appearance wher
ever there were depots or railway bridges and level crossings to
be
1
and the villages along the coast emptied of their
guarded,
1 A Speaker s Commentary, vol. p. 166. Cf. Sir Arthur Griffith Bos-

Lord Ullswater, i,
cawen, Memories, Grierson had arranged to come and see us at work on

p. 167: Sir James
came I
the following Wednesday and lunch in Mess; but when Wednesday morning
that he was obliged to go
received a message from him that things looked so threatening
to the War Office. On the following Saturday precautionary measures
were being adopted
station at
and I received an order to send a detachment off at once to guard the seaplane
669
fishermen whom the Admiralty had called up by what amounted
secret mobilization. On Friday, in contravention of Grey
1
to a s
express desire, hitherto strictly observed, that there should be no

collective demonstration on the question of war, a number of
Members of Parliament organized in the lobbies of the House of
Commons a demonstration in favour of neutrality. But it was a
feeble affair.
2
On
Saturday the advocates of peace at any price
took more definite action. Two committees to organize propa
ganda on behalf of neutrality were formed. They drew up two
manifestoes forwhich they secured a number of important signa
tures amongthe pacifist intelligentsia. 3 Would these signatories
succeed in rousing the opinion of the country against the war
party? Perhaps with the simplicity characteristic of the English
propagandist they thought so. But it was very late in the day.
On Friday, the most impetuous member of the Cabinet,
Churchill, exasperated by his colleagues calm, made overtures to
Bonar Law for the formation of a Coalition Cabinet in the event
of a split among the Liberals. Bonar Law however still hung
back and would negotiate only with the Prime Minister in person.
But in the afternoon of the following day, Saturday August i,
the Opposition leaders, hastily summoned by a group of alarmed
supporters, hurried back from the country and renouncing their
week-end met at Lansdowne House to concert a joint approach
to the Government. A letter was composed and despatched to the
Prime Minister on Sunday morning in which the Opposition
promised him its unreserved support in the crisis through which
the country was passing. 4 Its timely receipt strengthened Asquith s
"Westgate.*
L. J. Maxse, Retrospect and Reminiscence (National Review, vol. bed, p.
746): The organizers of the British Expeditionary Force were decidedly "doing their bit"
all the more because a genius among them had invented the
phrase "precautionary
period"
which permitted certain measures to be taken on the ipse dixit of the Secretary
df State, without reference to the Cabinet and without a civilian realizing how important
they were when time was the only thing that mattered. For these measures of preliminary
mobilization see further Robert Burden Haldane, An. Autobiography, p. 276.
1
Stephen Reynolds to Miss Jane Reynolds, August i, 1914: I expect you are very
startled and worried over these threatenings of war. It has hit us very hard here: for the
British mobilization newspapers to the contrary is undoubtedly very complete; all our
navy people are at sea and we don t know where/ (Letters of Stephen Reynolds* p. 191.)
2
Christopher Addison, Politics from Within, 1911-1918, vol. i, p. 37.
*
s Irene
Cooper Willis, How we went into the War. AStudy of Liberal Imperialism, p. 61.
Lord Beaverbrook, Politicians and the War, 1914-1916, pp. 22 sqq. also for the cir
cumstances which led up to this step see L. S. Maxse Retrospect and Reminiscence
(National Review/, August 1918, vol. bod, pp. 745 sqq.). Cf. Charles Roux, Trois Ambas-
sadesfranfaises a la veille de la guerre, pp. 43-52, a lively account, unfortunately damaged by
inaccuracies of detail, which on this point affords Maxse s account the interesting sup
port of the author s personal recollections.
670
moment. For that same morning the minis
position at a decisive
terswere informed at a meeting of the Cabinet that Churchill
with the approval of the Premier and some of his colleagues had
taken the responsibility of ordering the mobilization of the fleet.
The majority of the Cabinet approved the step. 1 The partisans of
neutrality who only a few days, perhaps even a few hours before,
had cherished the illusion that the majority of the Government
was of their opinion announced their intention to resign.
.
Who were they ? John Burns, a self-opinionated man and per
haps even more anti-French than pacifist. Lord Morley, a man of
less violent temper who was obliged to
recognize that the argu
ments of the war party were not always easy to answer and who
disclaimed any desire to persuade his younger colleagues to follow
his example. Nevertheless, an heir of Gladstone s policy and a
veteran of peace, the old man made it a point of honour not to
take part in a war Cabinet in which he would hamper than rather
2
help his colleagues. Neither ofthe two had the necessary prestige to
become the leader of a Radical opposition against a Liberal Cabinet
which had become a War Cabinet. Nor had Sir John Simon who
adopted their position, a skilful barrister, and an active politician
but not a great statesman. But for a few hours the pacifists
thought they had found a leader in the person of Lloyd George.
At the beginning of the week Lloyd George is said to have
inclined to the side of Grey and Churchill and had seemed disposed
to adopt once more the belligerent attitude he had assumed once
before, three years earlier, at the time of the Agadir crisis. But
how could he forget that in the interval and indeed down to the
3
very eve of the crisis provoked by the Austrian ultimatum he had
1
Winston S. Churchill, The World Crisis, 19H-1914, p. 217.
2
*What should I be doing in a "War Ministry?* Words used by Morley on September
13, 1914, and reported by J. H. Morgan. (John Viscount Morley, An Appreciation, and
some Reminiscences, p. 43.).
s
See his speech in the House of Commons on July 23, during the debate on the third
reading of the Finance Bill: *It is very difficult for our nation to arrest this very terrible
development [of armaments] You cannot do it ... I realize that,, but the encouraging
.
symptom which I observe is that the movement against it is a cosmopolitan one and an
international one. Whether it will bear fruit this year or next year, that I am not sure of,
but I am certain that it will come. I can see signs, distinct signs, of reaction throughout the
world. Take a neighbour of ours. Our relations are very much better than they were a
few years ago. There is none of that snarling which we used to see, more especially in the
Press of those two great, I will not say rival nations, but two great Empires. The feeling
is better altogether between them. They begin to realize they can co-operate for common
ends and that the points of co-operation are greater and more numerous and more impor
tant than the points of possible controversy. (Parliamentary Debates, Commons 1914* 5th
Series, vol. Ixv, pp. 727-8.)
671
been the champion of a rapprochement with Germany and dis
armament. It was therefore only natural that on Friday he should
have been affected by the deputation from the City and made
himself its advocate in the Cabinet. An eye witness describes him
following with his thumb the course of the Meuse Valley on a
map of Belgium and asking his colleagues if it were really worth
while going to war to prevent the German army taking that
route. 1 Then he appears once more to have hesitated. On Saturday
he denied that in laying the arguments of the City financiers be
fore the Cabinet he had intended to make them his own, and his
2
frequent talks with Churchill alarmed Lord Morley. His moral
repute had been shaken by the Marconi scandal, his great Insurance
Act had aroused inevitable dissatisfaction, his programme of land
reform was hanging fire, his Budget for the current year had just
ended in a fiasco, and the Irish crisis would involve for him, as for
other English statesmen, nothing but mortification. The unexpec
ted outbreak of a great European war opened new prospects in
which he must take his bearings within a few hours. It was an
anxious problem for a man of his imaginative and impressionable
temperament, a decision in which his career as well as his con
science was at stake. On Sunday morning he joined Burns,
Morley, and Simon in upholding the policy of neutrality.

. The same evening, when the Cabinet reassembled, Burns defi
nitely resigned. At Asquith s

Lord Morley consented to
request
keep the matter open until Monday morning. Next day he re
signed. But Simon, and what was a more serious blow for the
supporters of neutrality, Lloyd George, remained in the Cabinet.
There was no longer in any real sense a Liberal split. There were
simply two resignations from the Cabinet, whose importance was
moral, rather than political and a third, Charles Trevelyan s, in
the subordinate ranks of the Ministry. The great Liberal organs
continued for a day longer to kick against the pricks. But the
entire party was being swept along by the current which was
bearing the nation into war.

1
Lord Beaverbrook, Politicians and the War, p. 29.
2
His biographer, J. Hugh Edwards, depicts him writing on Saturday evening a letter
to one of his fellow ministers in which he protested with the utmost vigour against the
entry of England into the war and then keeping the letter in his pocket as the result of a
conversation with the Belgian minister who had suddenly converted him to the cause of
war. But is not the incident misdated and should it not be placed on the evening of Sunday,
August 2? (J. Hugh Edwards, The Life of David Lloyd George, vol. iv, p. 211.)
672
14
The best way to explain this decision, made almost instan
taneously by millions, will perhaps be to go back to the conversa

tionsbetween Grey and Cambon on Friday. Up to the present ,
Grey declared *we did not feel, and public opinion did not feel,
that any treaties or other obligations of this country were in
volved. But he added that further developments might alter this
situation/ and that the preservation of the neutrality of Belgium
might prove an important factor, deciding England to enter the
war. 1 And almost immediately after Cambon left him he officially
asked the two Governments of Berlin and Paris for a pledge to
Paris gave it at once, Berlin refused.
respect Belgian neutrality.
was therefore if not even juridically, bound to
England morally,
declare war on Germany. Nevertheless, on Saturday when Lich-
nowsky asked Grey whether, if Germany gave an undertaking not
to violate Belgian neutrality,England would promise to remain
neutral, he replied 1 cannot say that our hands are still free. 2 For
: ;
he had just seen Cambon who had pressed him even more insis
tently than the day before. Moreover,
an exceedingly close tie
united the French and British navies. France, relying on her
to the
agreement with England, had transferred her entire navy
Mediterranean, leaving the defence of her northern coast to the
British fleet. How then could England without dishonour, indeed
without confessing that she was no longer a first-class power,
allow her fleet to look on while the German navy made itself
master of the Channel, sank the French mercantile marine, and
bombarded the French ports? This was the question Grey laid
before his colleagues on Sunday morning and it was his answer
to it which secured the assent of the majority against the still for
midable opposition of a group of dissidents of which Lloyd George
seemed likely to take the lead. Was this then the immediate cause
of England s entrance into the war? But next day Sir Edward
which had
Grey was informed that the German Government
declared war on France would undertake not to allow its men-of-
1
Sir Edward Grey to Sir F. Bertie July 30, 1914 (British Diplomatic Documents . . . vol.
2
Sir Edward Grey to Sir Edward Goschen, August 1914 (British Documents . , . vol. xi,
to the Minister for Foreign Affairs, August i, 1914,
pp. 260-61). Cf. Prince Lichnowsky
who however adds in conclusion: He returned constantly to the question of Belgian
neutrality which in his opinion
would in any case play a very important part (Die
Deutschen Dokumente . . vol. iii, pp. 89-90.)
.
673
enter the Channel, and England declared war all the same.
1
war to
We are therefore driven back to the conclusion that the factor
which determined irrevocably the patriotic insurgence of the
nation was in fact the despatch on Sunday evening of the German
ultimatum to Belgium, followed on Monday morning by the
appeal of the Song of the Belgians to the King of England, asking
for his diplomatic intervention, But we must understand why the
German invasion of Belgium possessed this decisive importance.
In the first place, the violation of Belgian neutrality by the
German army, if it enabled Germany to win
Napoin France a
leonic victory, would mean, whatever pledges German the
Government might have given, the annihilation of Belgium as a
nation. The war therefore in the West assumed from the very first
the character it possessed in the Balkans aud the Danube valley of
a war in which the principle of nationality was at stake. There was,
however, a difference between western and south-eastern Europe.
In the latter case, the nation Austria was preparing to destroy was
a focus of rebellion which sought by revolution and assassination
to liberate the Yugo-Slavs at present subject to Hungarian or
German rule in other words, to change the existing territorial
arrangement. In the west on the contrary the nation attacked
was innocent of any annexationist ambitions or intrigues against
Germany and its existence guaranteed by international treaties,
constituted in the fullest sense an integral part of the European
territorial arrangement. To go to the assistance of Belgium was
therefore to embark upon a conservative not a revolutionary war,
a war to protect at once the principle of nationality, the established
order, and the sanctity of treaties. But if Belgium had not been so
close to the British coast would England have been stirred so
powerfully, or rather would she ever have guaranteed Belgian

neutrality? If the English were disposed to regard the indepen
dence of Belgium as the keystone of the European balance of
power, it was because her very existence was in a sense a master
piece of British diplomacy. By creating Belgium England had
1
H. of C., August 3, 1914, Sir Edward Grey s speech: *. . Things move very hurriedly
.
from, hour to hour. Fresh news comes in, and I cannot give this in a.very formal way; but
I understand that the German Government would be
prepared, if we would pledge our
selves to neutrality, to agree that the fleet would not attack the Northern Coast of France.
I have only heard that shortly before I came to the House", but it is far too narrow an
engagement for us. And, Sir, there is the more serious consideration becoming more
serious every hour these is the question of the neutrality of Belgium/ (Parliamentary
Debates , Commons 1914; 5th Series, vol. Ixv, p. 1818.)
674
intended to make it finally impossible for the greatest European
power France formerly, Germany at present to occupy Ant
werp and thus permanently threaten the mouth of the Thames
with its
navy. The Belgian
question had further complicated a
situation akeady bristling with thorny problems, the south-eastern
problem of nationality, the western problem of armed peace, and

the naval rivalry between England and Germany. British foreign
policy was less concerned than one might suppose
to preserve the
balance of power in Europe. What she would not permit and the
instinctively of the same mind was that
entire nation was the
strongest military power in Europe, now also the strongest

naval
power on the Continent, should endanger England s naval supre

macy by establishing what would amount to a European balance
of power at sea.
On Monday morning the Government decided to follow up
the mobilization of the navy by mobilizing the army. Lord Hal-
dane offered to return to the War Office, at which for six years
he had accomplished so much for military reorganization. The
Premier, whom a political accident had placed at the War Office,
was delighted to make way for him. Did Haldane wish, as has
often been said and is possible in spite of his denials, to become
once more the official Secretary of State for War? Could he have
failed to understand that his famous visit to Berlin rendered him
suspect to the public? Nevertheless,
from the strictly professional
the only man who could save the
point of view he was perhaps
War Office from the confusion which prevailed. For at the very
.moment of mobilization no one at the War Office, it would
appear, knew what use to make of the men being called to the
colours, whether they should be despatched immediately to
France, or kept for imperial defence or whether the plan long
cherished by the Admiralty should be adopted, the fleet des
patched to win a new Trafalgar
and an invasion organized at
1
some on the German coast. One thing at least was certain,
point
there would be war.
and the War, pp. 43 sqqO* even Haldane
According to Lord Beaverbrook (Politicians
1
hesitated to order the despatch of the expeditionary force. But this

is flatly contradicted
at Fallodon on
by Lord Grey of Fallodon (Sir Edward Grey) in his speech Augustus,
1928 : Whenthe crisis came he aloneamong the civilians, according to my recollection,
was atonce unreservedly for sending the whole of the Expeditionary Force abroad
imme
to be as prompt and courageous in action as he had been ener
diately, showing himself
getic and wise in preparation.* It is also contradicted by J.
H. Morgan, an intimate friend
of Lord Haldane, who in an article entitled "The Riddle of Lord Haldane* (Quarterly
675
This was what Grey explained in the afternoon to the House of
Commons. His speech, cool, restrained, and devoid of rhetoric
won the almost unanimous assent of the House. handful of paci A
fists, not one of whom represented a party or even a group pror
tested. What is asked Ramsay MacDonald, of talking

the use ,
about coming of Belgium, when, as a matter of fact,

to the aid
you are engaging in whole European war which is not going to

a
leave the map of Europe in the position it is in now? 1 They re
ceived a courteous hearing from an audience coldly hostile. In the
streets the crowd were singing patriotic songs, and the
young
men gathering in queues outside the recruiting stations. Next
morning, the Prime Minister, without troubling to consult the
Cabinet and confident of the silent support of the entire country,
authorized Grey to send Sir Edward Goschen a telegram calling
upon the German Government to pledge itself before midnight
of Belgium. What reply could be given?
to respect the neutrality
The invasion of Belgium had already begun. Night fell. England
entered the war.
Review t January 1929, vol. ccxlii, p. 18) writes as follows: Not only were all the civilians
for nursing the Expeditionary Force to defend our shores, but so were even some of the
soldiers. I have high authority for saying that Lord Roberts, who, as I know, was called
in by the Cabinet, wished to hold the Expeditionary Force back, believing then, as he did,
in the possibility of immediate invasion. As for Lord Kitchener, invasion was to him, as
a former member of the Army Council recently expressed it to me, an "obsession" to the
very end/ And fin ally it is contradicted by Lord Haldane himself whose statement is
explicit and detailed: I need hardly say that there was never the slightest foundation for
the suggestion presently to be launched that I had wished to delay the sending of the
Expeditionary Force. I had desired to send off all the six divisions from the outset. Careful
consultation with the Admiralty had made it plain that they would guarantee that there
would be no practical possibility of serious invasion, and after the War was over I ascer
tained that the Germans had never thought seriously of attempting it. In the afternoon of
Monday (the 3rd) the Prime Minister had asked me to summon a War Council, and to
select those who should attend. Among others I summoned Lord Roberts and Lord
Kitchener, who happened to be in London. The Council proved a little timid about inva
sion, and did not like the idea of all the six divisions leaving the* country, but it decided
that four should go at once and that the fifth should follow ... Sir John French and I
wanted all the six to start, but we were in a minority. There was available, as we pointed
out, a seventh, the sections of which would have to be brought in part from Egypt/
(R. B. Haldane, An Autobiography, pp. 277-8.)
1
Parliamentary Debates, Commons 1914, 5th Series, vol. Ixv, p. 1830.
676
Ind ex
Summaryjurisdiction (Married Women)
Abdul Aziz, 135, 379 Act, 496
Abdul Hamid, 372-3, 62^-8 1896, Poor Law Guardians (Ireland) Act,
Acts of Parliament: 5I3.
1834, Poor Law Amendment Act, 512/1. 1897, Workmen s Compensation Act, 99
1835, Municipal Corporations Act, 512/1. 1898, Vagrancy Act, 499/1. Local Govern
;
ment (Ireland) Act, 5I3.

1857, Matrimonial Causes Act, 490-3
1858, Matrimonial Causes
Amendment 1899, London Government Act, 5130.
Act, 49i- 1900, Commonwealth of Australia Con
stitution Act, 23 Workmen s Compen
1858, Combination of "Workmen Act, 95
;
1864, 1866, 1868, 1869, Contagious

Dis sation Act, 99; Railway Employment
(Prevention of Accidents) Act,
108
eases Acts, 498-9
1869, Municipal Franchise Act, 513/1* 1901, Factory and Workshop Act, 248
1870, Married Women

s Property Act, 1902, Patents Act, 16; Education Act,
495; Education Act, 512/1. 65-9, 5i2.; Immoral Traffic (Scotland)

Act, 499-
1873, Supreme Court of Judicature Act,
of Judicature Land Act (Ireland), 54-7
324; Supreme Court
1903,
Austra 1906, Merchant Shipping Act, 15; Labour
(Commencement) Act, ii$n.\
ers (Ireland) Act, 56; Town Tenants
lian Colonies Duties Act, 543/1.
Women s (Ireland) Act, 56; Education
of Defect
1874, Married Property
ive Children (Scotland) Act, 80-1;
Amendment Act, 495/1.
Education (Provision of Meals) Act, 81;
1875, Supreme Court of Judicature Act,
.
Trade Disputes Act, 93-8, 453;
3<>3,
Workmen s Compensation Act, 100-2,

1876, Appellate Jurisdiction Act, 325"-;
Trade Union Act Amendment Act, 483 497 ; Justices of the Peace Act, 315/1.
Women s 1907, Patents and Designs (Amendment)
1877, Married Property (Scot
Act, 16; Patents and Designs Act, 16-17;
land) Act, 496/1.
Amendment Evicted Tenants (Ireland) Act, 56,
1878, Matrimonial Causes
102-3; United Methodist Church Act,
Act, 493
Women s 75; (Administrative Provisions) Act,
1881, Married Property (Scot
82; Small Holdings and Allotments
land) Act, 496/1.
Women s Property Act, Act, 102; Factory and Workshop Act,
1882, Married
103; Employment of Women Act,
496; Municipal Councils Act, 504*1. ^
1 884, Married Women s Property Act,

103-4; Companies Act, 103; Territorial
and Reserve Forces Act, 175-84, 315;
496; Matrimonial Causes Act, 497
Married Women s Property Act, 496;
1885, Criminal Law Amendment Act, 499
of Infants Deceased Wife s Sister Marriage Act,
Guardianship and Custody
497 J Qualification of Women County
1886*,
497; Married Women
Mainte
Act,
and Borough Councils Act, 519; Quali
nance in Case of Desertion Act, 497;
Diseases Acts, fication of Women County and Town
To Repeal Contagious
Councils (Scotland) Act, 519
498 the Indian Press
2 rt 1908, Acts to Regulate
1888, Appellate Jurisdiction Act, 3 5 -J
and to deal with Explosive outrages in
Local Government Act, 512*1, Anarchist
India, 50; Act subjecting
1889, Local Government (Scotland)
Act,
Plots in India to Special Jurisdiction,
Chil
50; Education (Scotland) Act, 82;
1891, Factory and Workshop Act, 247-8
dren Act, 82., 285/1.; Small Holdings
1892, Indian Councils Act, 46, 51
and and Allotments Act, 103; Coal Mines
1893 Elementary Education (Blind
82; Married Regulation Act, 240-2;
Old Age Pen
Deaf Children) Act,
Women s
sions Act, 280-4; Married
Women s Property Act, 49& PuUic Meetings
Local Property Act, 49^;
1894, Merchant Shipping Act, 23;
Act, 520; Irish Universities Act, 529-30
Government Act, 5I3- South Africa
Act, 247-8; 1909, Commonwealth of
1895, Factory and Workshop
Act, 36, 296; Indian Councils Act, 51,
Conciliation (Trade Disputes) Act, 477;
677
INDEX
296; Local Education Authorises (Medi (Haldane), 172-4; of Army (Haldane),
cal Treatment) Act, 82; Trade Boards 174-8; Special Reserve, 176-8; Territorial
Act, 252-3, 296, 446, 448, 490; Labour Army, 178-86, 189-93, 397; Officers
Exchanges Act, 260-1, 296; Board of Training Corps, 185 ; the Army in Ireland,
Trade Act, 261-2; Road Development 555-8; mobilizes for War, 675; Co
and Improvement Funds Act, 290; operation with French and Belgian Armies,
Land Act (Ireland), 296-7, 532-4; 186-9, 191, 411*-, 428, 431-2, 575, 59*
Housing and Town Planning Act, 296; French, 591
Naval Discipline Act, 599 German, 386, 414, 588, 591
1910, Accession Declaration Act, 78; Edu Irish Volunteers, 563-6; Citizen Army,
cation (Choice of Employment) Act, 562-3
82, 8s. Ulster Volunteers, 551-2
1911, Old Age Pensions (Amendment) Army Council, 167
Act, 284tt.;Parliament Act, 329-31, Arnold-Forster, H. O., 165-71, 173-9, 181
345-50, 3^g 547-8; National Insurance
) Askwith, Sir George (Lord), 107, 265, 477
Act, 351-62, 446-7, 477-9, 497; Asquith, Herbert Henry (later Lord Oxford
Official Secrets Act, 43 1 ; Local Authori and Asquith), Liberal policy towards Ire
ties (Ireland) Qualification of Women land, 4-5; favours free-trade orthodoxy,
Act, 5i9n. 22; and Land Act of 1903, 57; becomes
1912, Minimum Wage yi Mines Act, Prime Minister (1908), 232, 235-7, 370;
464-5; Criminal Law Amendment Act, outlines Government programme, 255;
499 at the Exchequer, 268-70; presents 1907
1913, Provisional Collection of Taxes Act, Budget, 278-80; and necessity for in
349.; Trade Unions Act, 447*1.; Rail creased expenditure, 287; seeks dissolution
way and Land Traffic Act, 46 in.; of Parliament, 305-6; and constitutional
National Insurance Act, 479.; Pris crisis (1909), 316-17, 320; introduces Bill
oners Temporary Discharge for 111 to strengthen Upper House, 329-30; and
Health Act (Cat and Mouse Act), 526 Budget for 1910-11, 335; considers Bill to
1914, National Insurance Amendment put Budget before nation, 338-9; and
Act, 479.; Anglo-Persian Oil Com Election of 1910, 341-2; and Parliament
pany (Acquisition of Capital) Act, Bill, 342-3, 345-6; and the navy, 391-2,
605-^ 397; and Agadir episode, 426; and railway

1919, Welsh Church Temporalities Act, strike (1911), 459; proposals to miners,
46 3-4 i and women suffrage, 522-4; and
Admiralty, 196-7, 206-7, 399-402, 431-3, Government of Ireland Bill (1912), 546,
583-4, see also Navy 54S, 553; and the Irish revolt, 555-61;
Aehrenthal, Baron von, 372, 375-6 and British interests in Mediterranean, 613 ;
Afghanistan, 143-4 advice to Montenegro, 639; threatens
Agadir Episode, 424-9, 432, 434-6 Turkey, 642; urges unity at home, 663;
Agrarian Question, England, 102-3, 294-5, mentioned, 65, 97, 123, 126, 282, 298, 311,
468-72; Ireland, 53-7, 102-3, 469, 350, 351, 36i, 362, 443, 520, 530, 540-1,
530-5; Scotland, 102-3, 469 543, 562, 567, 569, 571, 572, 594, 638, 660,
Albania,, 627, 638-9, 644-5, 646-8 670-1, 672
Albert, King, 42, 674 Australia, 21, 23-5, 29, 250-2, 337, 340.,
Algeciras Conference, 127-35 452, 514, 609-11
Alphonso Xffl, 132 Austria-Hungary, 133-4, 371-8, 384-6, 396,
Ambassadors, Conference of, 636-41 612, 613, 627-9, 634-5, 638-41, 643-5,
Angell, Sir Norman, 387-409, 411, 635, 666 648-61, 665, 667-8
Anglican Church, 120; Education, 65-8, Aves, Sir Ernest, 265
70-4, 79-81; In Wales, 347, 441-2; De-
dine of Protestantism in, 77-9
Armament Industry, 387-9, 406 B
Army, British, 154-93; Conscription Ques
tion, 154-60, 163, 180, 192, 351, 394, Bagdad Railway, 146-9, 228, 417, 429-30,
396-7; Committee of Imperial Defence, 577-^9, 592
I57~9 Functions and Composition of Bakunin, 450-1
Regular Army, 160-3 ; Reorganization of Balfour, Arthur James (later Earl), resigna
Army (St. John Brodrick), 163-4; of War tion (1905), 3, 5; and imperial protection,
Office (Arnold-Forster), 165-8; of Army 12-14, 268, 341; and Irish Council Bill,
(Amold-Forster), 168-71; of War OfEce 61; opposes Education Bill (1906), 68; and
678
INDEX
birth of Labour Party, 92; and Trade Dis Welsh Church Disestablishment Bill,
putes Act (1906), 97-8; and Committee of 346-7, 441-2, 547
Imperial Defence, 157; and the navy, 159, 1913, Bill to abolish Plural Vote, 525;
166, 223, 391; and financial power of the
Temperance (Scotland) Bill, 5487*.
House of Lords, 301; and reform of the 1913-14, Irish Land Bill, 534
House of Lords, 314, 328; and Parliament 1914, Women s Enfranchisement Bill, 523
Bill, 345; resigns leadership of Unionist 1915, Territorial Force (Amendment)
party, 366; mentioned, 9, 48, 118, 298, 305, Bill, i84.; Irish Home Rule Amend
350,403,428, 535-6 ment 558n5o, 562, 663
Bill,
Balkans, 145-50, 370-8, 383-6, 626-61 Birrell, Augustine, 7, 59-60, 65-7, 81,
Balkan War, First, 628-9, 636-41; Second, 529-30, 536, 595-
642-3 Blackstone, 491-2, 506
Baffin, Albert, 410, 569 Blatchford, Robert, 155, 256, 395
Baltic Agreement, 153
Boers, 32-6, 472-4
Belgium, 41-3, 152, 189, 669, 673-5 Borden, Sir Robert, 609-11
Bell, Richard, 108, 111-12, 446,451-8 Bosnia and Herzegovina, 373, 376, 383-6,
Belloc, Hilaire, 78, 313, 466 396, 627, 649, 654
Berchtold, Count, 636 Botha, General Louis, 31, 33-4, 473
Beresford, Lord Charles, Admiral, 400-2, Bottomley, Horatio, 655
551 Bowerman, 89, 365
Bernhardi, Friedrich von, 588-9 Brailsford, H. N., 404-5, 652
Bethmann-Hollweg, Theobald von, 402, Bright, John, 318, 325
415, 416, 422-3, 568, 570-1, 575, 581 Brodrick, St. John W. (Viscount Midleton),
Bills:
I54-, 163-4, 171, 176
1869, Lord Russell s for creation of life Brougham, Lord, 489
peers, 323-4 Bryce, James, 7,53-4, 55, 58-9, 122-3, 529
1885, Irish Home Rule Bill, 542-3 Buckingham Palace Conference, 559-61,
1888, Lord Dunraven s to Reform House 659
of Lords, 326; Lord Salisbury s to Budgets:
Reform House of Lords, 326 1860, 300-1
1893, Irish Home Rule Bill, 542 1894, 301
1897, Women Suffrage Bill, 516-17 1904, 268-9, 271-2
1898,To regulate domestic industry, 249 1905, 268
1900 and onwards, Sir Charles Dilke s 1906, 17-18, 269-70
Annual Wages Boards Bill, 251 1907, 70-1, 278-80
1905, Workmen s Compensation Bill, 1908, 281, ^87
100; Militia Bill, 171 1909, 290-7, 304, 331
1906, Education Bill, 66-9 1910, 335, 341
1907, Irish Council Bill, 58-9, 528; 1911, 351-2, 357-8
MacKenna s Education Bill, 69-70; 1912, 569
Land Valuation Bill (Scotland), 102-3, 1913, 348
285; Miners Eight Hour Day Bill, 240; 1914, 349, 559.
Lord Newton s Bill to Reform House 1915, 272-3.
of Lords, 327; To Abolish Plural Vote, Bulgaria, 373, 375, 627-8, 638, 641-3
119, 442-3, 525 Blilow, Bernard von, Prince, 225, 376, 383,
1908, Education Bill, 71-3,, 285; Bishop 394, 412-17, 582
of St. Asaph s Education Bill, 256; Bureaucracy, 261-5, 445-8
Licensing Bill, 285, 292-3; s Women Burns, John, 7, 119, 122, 256, 260, 281, 360,
Enfranchisement Bill, 520-2 490, 671-2
1909, Naval Prizes Bill, 399 Butler, Josephine, 499-500
1910, Shackleton s Conciliation Bill, 522 Buxton, Noel, 373
1911, Lord Lansdowne s Bill to Reform Buxton, Sydney, 463
House of Lords, 342-3 Lord Balfour s
;
Bill to Establish Referendum, 342

1911-12, Sir George Kemp s Conciliation
Bill, 523-4 Cabinet, Constitution of, 3-8; remodelled,
1912, Franchise and Registration Bill, 444, 235-7
523-4, 547 Cailkux, Joseph, 424, 426, 429, 434, 436,
191214, Government of Ireland (Home 591
Rule) Bill, 441, 543-9, 555, 562; Cambon, Jules, 383., 571
679
INDEX
Cambon, Paul, 127, 175, 188, 573-5, 616, 238-44; Wages Dispute, 462-5; Minimum
642, 669, 673 Wage, 464-5 Trade Unionism, 484-6
;
Campbell-Bannerman, Sir Henry, on ques Cockermouth Election, 104-5

tion of Home Rule for Ireland, 4-5, 58, Colne Valley Election, 104-5
63-4, 540-1, 543; Prime Minister, 5-8; Colonies, Administration of, 20-37, 43-52,
reply to Balfour in Commons (1906), 337, 451-3
13-14; and Colonies Conference (1907), Colonial Conference (1907), 20-2; Imperial
21-2; and Chinese in the Transvaal, 30; (1911), 355 417, 609
and the Education Bill, 69; and Trades Commissions, Royal:
Disputes Act, 97-8; pledge to attack 1871, On Contagious Diseases Acts,
monopoly of great landlords, 102; oppo 498-9
nent of bellicose policies, 122-3; on 1890, Lord Harrington s of Inquiry into
hearing of dissolution of Duma, 142; the Administration of the Naval and
Indian policy, 174; and military conven Military Departments, 166, 173-4
tion with France, 188, 191; and naval 1902-3, Of Inquiry into Boer War, 166
expenditure, 206; article in The Nation on 1903-4, Duke of Norfolk s on Militia and
*The Hague Conference 221-2; his
, Volunteers, 168
retirement and death, 230-2; and excessive 1904, On Australian Navigation Bill.
creation of peers, 310; and restricting the 23-4; On Ritual Illegalities in the
peers prerogative, 319;

and the naval Church of England, 77-8
Two-Power Standard, 391-2; and femin 1900-5, On Coal Supply, 18
ism, 519-20; mentioned, 4, 170., 25, 48, 1905, Of Indian Inquiry,
44-5
101, 172, 191, 235, 282, 314, 335, 370 1905-9, On Poor Law, 256-60, 285
Canada, 21-3, 25, 27, 609-10 1906-8, Lord Dudley s on Irish Congested
Canterbury, Archbishop of (Lord Davidson), Districts, 56
72, 231 1906-9, On Afforestation, 289
Cardwell, Edward, Viscount, 161 1909, On Divorce .and Matrimonial
Carson, Sir Edward, 550-3, 55^, 559. 5<5i Causes, 493
Casablanca Incident, 379-80 1910, On
Selection ofJustices of the Peace,
Casement, Sir Roger, 563, 564
Cassel, Sir Ernest, 410, 569-70, 572, 57$ 1911, On Railway Dispute, 460-2; to
Catholics, Roman, 65-6,72; successful Inquire into Education and Training of
propaganda of, 77-9; see also Ireland Naval Officers, 6oo.
Cawdor, Lord, 202 1912, On the Government of India, 445
Cecil, Lord Hugh, 497 1913, On the Nationalization of the Rail
Cecil, Lord Robert, 313, 497 ways, 468
Chamberlain, Austen, 18, 268-9, 271-2, 274 Before 1914, On the Civil Service,
Chamberlain, Joseph, 8, 12-14, 17/1., 18, 20,
65, 69, 119, 268, 298 Committee on Designs (Naval), 214
Chesterton, G. K., 78; G. K. and Cecil, 466 Committee of Imperial Defence, 157-9,
Childers, Erskine, 565-6 169, 187-9, 4oi 431-2, 662
China, 43, 621-3 Committee, Lloyd George s, of Inquiry into
Chinese Labour on the Rand, 30-1 the Land, 469-70
Churchill, Winston Leonard Spencer, be Committees, Parliamentary unless otherwise
comes Under-Secretary for the Colonies, stated:
8; and the Transvaal Constitution, 34; 1888-90, of House of Lords on Sweating,

and Labour representatives in Parliament, 246-7
93n.; at the Board of Trade, 236-7, 281, 1901, Sir Clinton Dawkins , of Inquiry
286-9, 298; and 1909 naval estimates, 398; into War Office, 166
at the Admiralty, 432, 569-71, 582-4, 1902, ofBoard of Trade to Inquire into
586-7, 594-606, 609-15, 660-2, 670-2; Mercantile Marine (Lord St. Helier s), 15
and extension of the franchise, 443-4; at 1903, On Old Age Pensions, 281
the Home Office, 446, 454,458-9; and 1903-5, On Collection of Income Tax,
feminism, 522; and the autonomy of 272-4
Ulster, 553, 555; mentioned, 351, 364, 368, 1904, On Foreign Ships (Bonar Law s),
635, 654 15; LordEsher s on War Office Recon-
Clarke, Sir George (Lord Sydenham), 166, stitution, 165, 170, 220
195 1906, On Income Tax, 274
1
Clernenceau, Georges, 137, 191, 424 1906-7 (Departmental) On Miners Eight
Coalmining, 17-18; Eight Hours Day, Hours Day, 240-2
680
INDEX
1907, Of House of Lords on the Composi 83-6; Higher Education, 86-90; Universi
tion of the House of Lords, 327-8, 337 ties,86-90, 185, 264, 442, 501-4, 529-30;
1908, Select, on Home Work, 248, 252; Military Training in Public Schools,
on Fair "Wages, 249; To Inquire into 183-6; Public Schools, 183-6
Irish Land Purchase, 531 Edward VH, 6, 78, 124, 127-8, 136, 141,
1912, Of Inquiry into the Marconi Scan 190-1, 195,228-31, 305, 310-11, 3i5-i6n.,
dal, 467 331-3, 370-1, 376, 381-3, 395, 4o8.,
1913, On Petrol Supply, 605-6 410, 418-20, 655
Congo, 426, 429, 434, 435 Egypt, Government of, 37-40, 623-4
Congo, Belgian, 410, 435; Morel s
Agita Elections, General:
tion, 40-2 January 1906, 8-13
Connolly, James, 452, 475, 484, 539, 540 January 1910, 305-8
Conscription, 154-60, 163, 180, 351, 394-5, December 1910, 341-2
396-7, 549 Elgin, V. A. Bruce, Earl of, 7, 34, 236
Constitution, British, 299-350 Engels, Friedrich, 664
Of Dominions, 541-3 Esher, R. B. Brett, Viscount o 165-6, 173-
Of Transvaal and Orange River, 32-4 4, 195-6, 4o8., 41 8n.
Of South Africa, 35-7 Ethiopian Movement, 29, 43
Contraband Question, 226-7, 398-9, 422
Convention, Anglo-Russian, 143-6
County Associations, 182-4
Covenant, Ulster, 551
Craig, Captain, 561 Fabian Society, 105-6, 356
Crewe, Earl of (Robert Crewe Milnes), 236, Federation of South Africa, 35-7
327, 340-1, 381, 559 Federation of Trade Unions, 455-6, 482-6
Cromer, Earl of (Evelyn Baring), 37-42, Feminism, 486-527; for detailed analysis see
302rt. Women
Crowe, Sir Eyre, 630, 667 Finance, see Budgets and Income Tax
Curragh Mutiny, 555-8 Finance and War, 380-1, 404-11, 666-7
Curtis, Lionel, 35 Fisher, Admiral Sir John Arbuthnot (later
Curzon, Baron of
Kedleston (George Lord Fisher), 166, 174, 187, 583, 597-8,
- 11 , 626 600, 613; at the Admiralty, 194-207,
Nathaniel), 44-6, 143-4, 4*
211-19, 223-4, 228, 265, 287, 396; leaves
the Admiralty, 400-1
D France, recognizes British Suzerainty in
Dardanelles Question, 148-50, 374-5, 627 Egypt, 37; in Morocco, 127-37, 379-80,
Davidson, Miss, 526 432-3, 435-6; attitude towards Germany,
Deakin, Alfred, 25, 250-1 137; hostility to Germany, 435, 634-5;
Declaration of London, 227, 399, 402, 422, negotiations with Germany, 370-81, 383,
601 420-7, 428-9, 432-3; rapprochement with
Delcasse, Theophile, 128, 133, 137, 436, 574 Germany, 377-81, 383; poEcy in Turkey,
Denshawai Incident, 39, 42 376-7, 383, 636; entente with Britain
Despard, Mrs., 525 strengthened, 187-9, *9i 37, 4H-
Devlin, 532, 535, 539, 54<5, 555 574-5, 611-15; the army, 591; co-opera
Dilke, Sir Charles, 97, 182, 250-2 tion with British army, 187-9, 191, 4U>
Dillon, John, 54, 58, 532-4, 555, 562 5<5i, 428, 431, 575; the navy, 209, 392, 611-15;
Disarmament, 221-6, 587, 601-3, 658 co-operation with British navy, 611-15;
Divorce, 491-4 with Russian, 615-16; disturbances in
Dominions, Status, 25-7, 541-3 ; Tide, 26* France, 421, 455, 458; Syndicalism in
Dreadnoughts, 214-9, 229, 288, 390-1, 393, France, 451, 455, 458; amalgamation of
397-8, 400-3, 585, 587, 604-13, 615-16 trade unions in France, 482-4; policy on
Dunraven, W. T. Wyndham Quin, Earl of, approach of War, 661, 663, 664-5, 667-9,
6l, 245, 326, 534, 553 673
Franchise, British, 119, 442-4, 486-7, 522-4,
549; see also Women
Suffrage, 511-27
Francis Ferdinand, Archduke, assassination
Education, 64-90; Bill of 1906, 65-9; of of, 654
1907, 69-71; of 1908, 71-3, 285; Bishop Francis Joseph, 371, 633
of St. Asaph s Bill, 72; Minor Reforms, French, General Sir John, 153, 396, 557,
81-2; Secondary made more democratic, 676/1.
681
INDEX
658-65, 667, 669-70, 675-6; and Belgian
independence, 673-5; mentioned, 4, 6-7,
Galsworthy, John, 273 n., 275 43, 222-3, 237, 285, 298, 334, 409, 411,
Gandhi, Mohandas Daramchad, 31-2, 47 463, 517, 567, 592, 594
General Staff, 172-4 Grierson, Colonel, 187
George V, 332-3* 339-40, 345, 420, 425-, Griffith, Arthur, 61-2
521, 525, 556, 559-61, 616, 623, 632, 633, Guild Socialism, 479-81
64on., 659, 665, 669
George, Henry, 295 H
Germany, policy of, 121-2, 369-70, 381-6,
412-35, 570-4, 576-82, 588-92, 628, Hague Conference, Second, 221-7, 398, 422
633-40, 642, 644-6, 648-50; on the Haldane, Richard Burdon, Viscount, Secre
approach of the War, 655-8, 667-8, tary for War, 4, 5-6, 25, 93 n., 97, 123,
673-5; in Morocco, 127-35, 379-80, 126, 236, 274, 325, 581-2, 585-7, 592, 594,
422-6, 432-3, 434-6; in Turkey, 143-9, 610, 632-4, 660, 675; see especially for his
376-7, 578-9, 645-6; Russian policy of, work at the War Office, 154, 172-83,
140, 384, 386, 429, 620, 658, 668; relations 188-93
with France, 121-2, 127-37, 377-8o, 383, Hamilton, Lord Claud, 112, 266n.
422-7, 428-9, 432-6, 589-92, 619, 661, Hamilton, General Sir Ian, 153, 181, 405^.
66 8-9; negotiations with England, 416-18, Hardinge, Sir Charles (later Baron Har-
422-3, 576-82, 585-7, 592, 629-30, 656-7; dinge), 124, 139, 370, 381, 395, 4X8, 573,
British public opinion about, 136-7, 394, 623
403, 409-10, 412-14, 419, 592-4, 633-6, Hartshorn, Vernon, 463, 465
652-4; policy at second Hague Con Healy, Timothy, 62, 533
ference, 220-1, 224-7; sends arms to Henderson, Arthur, 89, 105-6, 260, 365
Ireland, 557-8, 565; supports Austria, Hertzog, General, 473
37<5-7 384, 645, 648-50, 658; Insurance Hewitt, Miss. 27
scheme in, 352-4; the army, 386, 414, Hird, Dennis, 87-9, 453, 462
589-92; the navy, 121, 203-5, 210, 213-14, Home Rule, All Round, 535-7, 542-3, 546
216, 229, 368, 386-7, 390-3, 414, 4i6, 420,, Irish, 4-5, 327, 350, 440, 534-6
584-7, 660; rivalry with British navy, Honours, sale of, 311-14
206-10, 390-3, 395, 416, 420-1, 438, Home, Rev. Sylvester, 73
580-8, 601-8 Hotzendorf, Marshal Conrad von, 384, 645,
Gladstone, Herbert, 7, 238, 252, 260, 281 650-2, 654
Gorst, Sir Eldon, 40, 623 House, Colonel, 619, 657
Gough, General Sir H., 556-7 Howth Gunrunning, 565-6, 659
Graham, Cunningham, 255 Hughes, Rev. Hugh Price, 74-5, 507
Grayson, Victor, 104, 254, 256, 450 Huguet, Commandant, 187-8
Greece, 627-8, 639, 641-3, 647-8 Hunger Marchers, 254^5
Grey (Agitator), 259 Hyndman, Henry M., 93, 105, 256, 395, 450
Grey, Sir Edward (later Lord Grey of
Falloden), and denunciation of Sugar Con
vention, 19; and Labour representatives
in Parliament, 93 n.; and foreign policy, Income Tax, 269-74, 275-6?*., 277-9, 291-2,
124-7, 152-3, 381, 383-4; and relations 559".
with Russia, 139, 141, 146, 370-1, 616-17, Independent Labour Party, 105-6, 256
625-6; and Bagdad railway and the India, Government of, 49-52, 296, 623;
Dardanelles, 148-50; and co-operation Northern Frontier, 143-4
with French and Belgian armies, 188-9, Indians in South Africa, 31-2
575; and second Hague Conference, Industrial Workers of the World, 451-2, 539
225; and leakage of naval estimates Insurance, National, 350-62, 446-7, 477~9
(1908), 249-50; and Constitutional reform, 497".
33Ott.; and naval construction, 395, 420-3, Ireland, Government of, 53-4; Home Rule
586, 588, 602; and the Declaration of for, 4-5, 58-64, 440, 535-66; Irish Council
London, 399-401; and negotiations witji Bill, 58-61; Home Rule Bill, 440, 543-8,
Germany, 416-18, 570, 572-3, 629-32; 554, 559-6o, 562, 663; agrarian question,
and Moroccan dispute, 425-6, 427-8, 54-7, 102-3, 469, 530-5; University ques
437-8, and Home Rule for Ulster,
579."> tion, 530; finance, 544-5; General Strike
553; and the Balkans, 636-45, 647, 652, in, 474, 484? 539; Nationalists: attitude to
656-7; and eve of First World War, Budget of 1909, 296-7, 307; position of in
682
INDEX
Parliament after 1910 Election, 306-7, 331, Labour Party, 90-3, 104-5, 255-6, 297,
339, 3 6 7 44> 528, 534; make war truce, 355-8, 364-6, 445-8, 519, 522, 524-5
663 ; position of in
Ireland, 58-9, 62-4, LamsdorrT, 138-9
528-30, 562-5; see also Redmond, John: Land Acts (Irish) (1903), 53-7; (1909),
Sinn Fein, 61-2, 537-40, 563, 564; Irish 530-4
Republican Brotherhood, 539-40; Irish Lansaowne, Henry Charles, Marquess of, 42,
Socialist Republican Party, 474, 539, 563, 69, 98, 118, 139, 169, 171, 187, 241, 286,
564; Irish Volunteers, 563-6; Citizen 298, 303, 305, 329, 340, 342, 343-4, 345-6,
Army, 562-3 ; Ulster Revolt against Home 437, 470., 561, 574-5
Rule, 536-7, 551-8; Curragh Mutiny, Larkin, James, 484, 485/1., 539
556-7; Buckingham Palace Conference, Laurier, Sir Wilfred, 21, 25, 609
559-61; Howth Gunrunning, 565-6, 659 Law, Bonar, 15^., 266-7, 437, 447, 524, 551
Irish Council Bill, 58-61, 528-9
Leopold n, 41-2
Isaacs, Godfrey, 467 Liberals in Office throughout this period,
Isaacs, Sir Rufus (later Marquess of Reading), passim. Pacifists v Imperialists, 3-8, 12-14,
.
467 125, 231, 234-7, 287-8, 368, 370, 399, 402,

Isvolsky, 139-40, 142, 148-51* 370-2, 374-5, 411, 427, 567, 571, 594-7, 671-2
383-6, 413, 4^9-30, 616, 627, 637 Lidgett, Scott, 75
Italy, 131, 134, 374, 434, 591, 612, 613, Liman von Sanders, General, Incident,
626-8, 633, 639-41, 644, 648, 660-1 645-6
Liquor trade, 292-3
Lloyd George, David (later Earl), at the
j Board of Trade, 15-17, 22-3, 261; arbi
Jameson, Dr. L. S., 35 trator in labour disputes, 107, 113-17,
Japan, 43, 138, 152, 621-2 460-1 ; at the Exchequer, 236-7, 267-304,
Jarrow election, 63, 104 316, 334-5, 348-55, 357-62, 364-6, 367-8,
Jellicoe, Admiral J. R. (later Earl), 420 398, 402-3, 410, 426-9, 431, 437, 443-4,
Jews, 78, 409-10, 466-7, 473 465-72, 477-9, 536, 555-6, 558-9, 560-1,
Johnson, Sir Harry, 652 569-70, 594-5, 602, 636, 653-4, 658,
Jowett, 92 671-2,673
-
Lords, House reject Education Bills,

of,
67-71; Trade Disputes Bill, 98;
pass
K reject Budget of 1909, 303-4; composition
Keeling, F. H., 266-7, 412/1., 430^., 593/1. of, 308-15; reform of, 323-9, 342-3;
Keir Hardie, 40-1, 105-6, 239, 365 and ., popularity of, 314-16; prerogatives of,
445, 456tt., 497"-, 518-19 299-304, 317-18; restriction of Lords*
Kemp, Sir George, 523-4 prerogatives, 316-22, 346-50; struggle
Kenney, Annie, 517 with House of Commons, 71, 117-20,
Kipling, Rudyard, 155?!., l84. 285-7, 298-308, 316-22, 329-31; attempt
Kitchener, H. Earl, 44-5, 143, 309, 613, at settlement, 333-9; Lords forced to sur
6i5., 624, 676^. render, 339-46; House of Lords after
Parliament Act, 346-50, 347-8, 559-60
Lords-Lieutenant, 181-3, 190, 315
Loreburn, Lord (Sir Robert Reid), 7, 122,
Labour, and Higher Education,
86-90; 411, 553, 560
representation 238; see also
of, 90-3, Louis of Battenberg, Admiral Prince, 583,
Labour Party; Legislation, 93-102, 107- 596, 617
17, 238-42, 244-55, 281-5, 351-62, Lowther, Sir Gerald, 373, 377-8
464-5; on women s labour, 249-51,
487-90; discontent, 444-50, 465, 550;
agitation, 254-5; Syndicalist agitation,
M
450-4, 462-3; disputes (see also Strikes), MacDonald, Ramsay, 90, 105-6, 192, 248-9,
107-16, 242-4, 261-2, 265, 450-65, 476-8, 251-2, 256, 265-6, 270-8ort., 310, 365,
481-2; sweated industries, 244-53; Nat~ 428, 445, 460^., 509-1011., 561, 676
ional Insurance, 351-62; unemployment, MacDonald, Mrs., 79/1., 248, 251-2, 509-1071.
190, 254-62; Insurance against, 352, 354, MacDonnell, Sir Antony, 3, 53, 58-9, 265
359-62; position of labour, 102-4, 236-42; MacKenna, Reginald, 70, 236, 287, 3-70,
in South Africa, 29-31, 472-4; in Ireland, 420, 422, 432, 569, 594, 599 .
574-6; Trade Unionism, see Trade Unions Mactavish, S. R., 88

Labour Exchanges, 260 Mann, Tom, 452, 454-6, 458, 464, 472, 474
683
INDEX
Mansbridge, Albert, 88, 89/1., 448/2. Fisher, 400; Colonial contribution to
Marconi Scandal, 466-7, 672 608-11; preparations for war,
659-62
Marriage, 490-8, 498-508, 544; married rivalry between British and
German
women, status of,494-8; property of, Navies, 207-10, 389-93, 395-6, 416
494-6 420-2, 438, 581-8, 601-8; Naval Holi
Marx, Karl, 244, 246, 275, 254, 487-8 day ,587, 601-2; co-operation with
Medical Association, 355-8, 478 French Navy, 431-2, 615-7,
629, 673-
Medicine, women in, 502-3 relations with Russian
Navy, 615-8, 656*
Merchant Shipping Act, 15-16 See also Churchill, Winston Leonard
Methodists, Union of, 75-6 Spenser; Fisher, Admiral Sir John Ar-
Mill, James, 295, 318, 511 buthnot; Navy, French; Navy, German-
Mill, John Stuart, 295, 499, 511-12, 515, 517 Naval Estimates
Milner, Alfred Viscount, 31-2, 35, 251 Navy, French, 209-10, 392-3, 611-5
Mining, Miners, see Coalmining Navy, German, 121-2, 204-5, 213-4, 216
Minto, G. J. Elliott, Earl of, 45, 48/1., 49, 51, 229, 3^9-70, 387, 390H., 393-4, 414-6
143 426, 582-7, 660
Money, Sir L. Chiozza, 2j6n., 277, 449. Newfoundland, 24
Montenegro, 638-41 Newton, Lord, 321
Morant, Sir Robert, 79, 88, 265, 360-1 New Zealand, 21, 23, 29, 282-4, 514, 609,
Morel, Edmund, 40-2 610-11
Morley, John (Viscount Morley of Black Nicholas II, Czar, 129, 370, 633,
649. See
burn), 7, 47-51, 122, 143-4, 302., 325., also Russia
349., 401, 4ii., 560, 637, 665, 671-2 Nicolson, Sir Arthur, 128, 131, 139,
Morocco, 127-35, 137, 379-8o, 423-8, 432,
j^
375, 38ott., 383, 573-4, 630-1, 657, 661
434-5 Noble, Sir Andrew, 115
Mulai Hafid, 134, 379
Nonconformists, parliamentary strength of,
Mulliner, 389-90, 398 64-5; education, 65-73, 79-8 1; decline of;
Murphy, W. M., 475, 533, 539 73-6; women s position among, 504
Music Hall Strike, 106-7
Northcliffe, Viscount, 310
Mutiny at Portsmouth, 219-20
O
N O Brien, William, 61, 63, 528-9, 532-5 3
o
Natal, 36; native revolt in, 42-3 O Connor, T. P., 107, 555
Nationalists, 57-8, 62-3, 297, 307, 330-1, Osborne judgment, 364, 445, 457
339, 367-8, 440, 528-9, 534, 562-5; see
also Redmond, John: Ireland
Native problem in South Africa, 27-9,
32-3
Native revolt in Natal, 29, 42-3
Pacifism, 222, 223-5, 386, 401, 404-12, 615
Naval Estimates, 157, 205-6, 268-9,
287, Pankhurst, Mrs., 516-7, 525-6
398, 420-1, 569, 587, 595-6, 612, 615 Pankhurst, Christabel, 516-7, 525-6
Naval Holiday, 587, 601-2
Pankhurst, Sylvia, 5160., 526
Navy, British,
194-224, 389-93, 397-402, Parliament Act, 329-31, 34O-I, 342, 344-50,
420-2, 581-7, 594-6x8, 640-1; public
357-8,547-9
confidence in, 193, 412, 582; Patents and Designs Act, 16-17
strength of,
389-93, 603-8; Admiralty, 195-6, 205-7,
Payment of Members of Parliament, 445
399-402, 582-4; training and recruiting of Old Age, 281-5, 288-9, 351-2
Pensions,
officers, 197-203, 599-601;
training and Penty, Arthur J., 478-80
recruiting of seamen, 203-5; conditions of Persia, 141-6, 148, 150, 417, 429, 605, 624-4$
seamen, 597-600; Royal Fleet Reserve,
Pethick-Lawrence, Mr. and Mrs., 526
205-7; Naval Reserve, 212-4, 612-3 Two- ; Petroleum Supply, 605-6
Power Standard, 207-10, 389-93, 420-1,
Pirrie, 310
437, 587; armoured cruisers, 208, 607;
Plunkett, Sir Horace, 53, 553
Dreadnoughts, 214-9, 229, 288, 390, 393, PoincarS, Raymond, 574, 591, 636-7, 659,
397-8, 403, 585, 587, 604-6; redistribution 66 1, 667, 669
of squadrons, 211-3, 612-5;
mutiny at Poor Law Commission, 256-60
Portsmouth, 219-20; Navy and armament
Portuguese Colonies, 426, 576-7, 579-81,
industry, 387-8; abolition of prize money, 592
601; naval manoeuvres, 393-5, 660; naval Preliminaries of London, 641-2
scare , 393-7,
427-8; fall of Admiral Presbyterians, Scottish Union of, 75
684
INDEX
Prize Money, Abolition of, 601 Smith, F. E. (later Birkenhead, Earl of), 344,
Prostitution, 498-500 551
Smith, Sir Herbert Llewellyn, 265, 352
R Snowden, Philip (later Viscount Snowden),
92, 106, 277-9, 293, 325"-, 356
Railwaymen, 107-14, 430, 457-62, 481, Social Democratic Federation
(Party), 104-5,
483-6 450
Redmond, John, 53, 58-60, 63, 528-9, 532, Socialism, 92-3, 105-6, 120, 266-7, 404-7,
541, 546, 555, 561-6 445, 450, 489, 509; Syndicalist Socialism,
Referendum, 336-9, 342 450-7, 462-3, 471-8, 539; Guild Socialism,
Reid, Sir Robert, see Loreburn, Lord 479-81; see also Labour
Repington, Colonel A Court, 186-7, 229, South Africa, 26-36, 296, 334, 34o., 472-4
556n. Spain, 131-2, 134-5, 152
Reserve, Naval, 212-13, 6*3 Stead, W. T., 194, 224, 393, 411, 499
Reserve, Royal Fleet, 205-7 Steed, Wickham, 651
Reserve, Special, 176-8 Stepney Anarchists, 453, 583
Reval Meeting, 370-2, 374 Strikes (actual and threatened), 430, 453-4,
Reynolds, Stephen, 41 in., 598 481, 527; Music Hall Employees, 106-7;
Ricardo, 294 Railwaymen, 107-14, 458-62; Cotton
Richardson, Lt.-Gen. Sir George Lloyd Spinners, 114, 459; Dockers, 115, 453-4;
Reilley, 552 and Seamen, 455-7; Engineers, 243; the
Roberts, Earl, 155, 158, 193, 309, 396, 675^. General Strike, 453, 465, 573; General
Robertson, Edward, 390 Strike in Ireland, 473-6, 484; General
Robson, Sir William, 97 Strike in South Africa, 472-4
Roebuck, 318-19 Suffrage, female, 511-27; see also Women
Roosevelt, President Theodore, 133-5, 225 Sugar Convention, 19-20
Rosebery, Earl of, 4-5, 8, 123, 230, 299, Swaraj Agitation, 46-7, 50-2, 623
305, 325-9, 334, 337, 340, 343 Sweating, 244-53
Rothschild, Lord, 297, 410, 666-7 Syndicalism, 450-7, 462-3, 471-7, 539
Roumania, 641-3
Rouvier, 137, 187-8, 436, 574
Runciman, Walter, 72
Ruskin College, 86-96
Russell, Lord John, 323-4 Taff Vale Judgment, 94, 108
Russia, defeat by Japan, 43 ; revolution in, Taxation, see Budgets; Income Tax
43, 139-41, 255, 664-5; Balkan policy, Territorial Army, 178-86, 189-93, 397
372, 374-6, 385-6, 577-9, 646-7; relations Thomas, J. R, in, 458, 483, 486, 557
with England, 132, 137-54, 3?o-i, 374~5, Tibet, 143-4
410, 624-6, 635; relations with France, Tilak, 46
127, 132-3, 378, 615-17, 619-20, 634, Tillett,Ben, 452, 453-8
640; relations with Germany, 133, 140-1, Tirpitz, Admiral von, 193, 204/1., 210, 2I4.,
421, 429, 577-9, 619-20, 633-4, 660-1, 2I7-, 383., 390, 405., 414-15, 423,
668; navy, 615-17, 627, 640-2, 652 567-9, 571, 584-5, 587-9, 616
Tonypandy Riot, 453
Trade Boards Act, 252-3, 446, 448, 490
Trade Disputes Act, 93-8, 106, 454
Samuel, Sir Herbert, 241, 274, 467 Trade Unions, and Higher Education, 88-9;
Sandjak, the, 372, 374, 377 liability of, 93-8, 363-4; and Bureaucracy,
Scutari Episode, 640-1 446-8; and strikes, 106-15, 454-65, 476-7;
Seely, 556-7 and Insurance Act, 356-7, 359-60; mem
Selborne, Earl of, 32, 195-6, 199, 206, 209, bership of women, 490-1 among Rail
;
264/1., 600 waymen, 107-14, 461-2; Osborne Judg

Serbia, 384-5, 627-8, 639, 641-8, 649-52, ment, 261-2, 447-8, 457; amalgamation
654-8, 661 of trade unions, 455-^6, 483-6; see also
Shackleton, 365, 446, 522 Labour; Labour Party
Shaw, Bernard, 79, 275, 365, 450, 506-7 Transport Workers Federation, 456-7,
Shuster,W. Morgan, 625 483- *
Simon, Sir John, 671-2 Transvaal, see South Africa
Sinn Fein, 61-2, 537-40, 563, 564 Triple Industrial Aîance, 485-6, 527
Smillie, 104,485 Turkey, Young Turk Revolution, 371-2,
685
INDEX
Webb, Beatrice, 245, 257, 261, 5iow.
626-8; English policy in, 145-5, 3?o,
642, 647; relations
with Germany and Webb, Sydney, 257
Wells, H. G., 79, 105, a66., 411 450,
Austria, 147-9, 372, 374, 377, 384, 645-6;
>
relations with France, 377-8, 380, 577-8, 506-7

Welsh Church, disestablishment of, 346,
633, 634, 642-3; war
with Italy, 627;
friction with on Egyptian fron
England 441-2, 547-9
tier, 48; Bagdad railway, 146-9, 228, 417, White, Captain, 563
Balkan War, 628-9,
42$H~30, 577-9; First
Wied, Prince von, 648
William II, Emperor of Germany, 121-2,
639, 641-2; Second Balkan War, 631, 642
Tweedmouth, Lord, 229-30, 236, 370 123, 128, 129-30, 132-3, 136, 140, 210,
Two-Power Standard, 207-10, 389-93, 220, 225, 228-30, 376, 381-2, 395-6, 402,
410, 414-16, 419, 421-2, 433-5, 567-8,
420-1, 437, 587
W. Lord), 618, 629, 631 570, 585-6, 590-1, 633, 645, 666-7, 669
Tyrell, Sir (later
Williams,]. E., 458
Wilson, President, 618
U Wilson, Admiral Sir Arthur Knyvet, 401,
Ulster, revolt against Home Rule, 537, 432, 583
Wilson, General Sir Henry, 575
551-8, 663
Ulster Volunteers, $52 Wilson, J. Havelock, 455, 485^
289, 352, Witt, Count, 132, 138, I5IH-
Unemployment, 190-1, 254-62, 487-
354-5, 359-62 m m
Women, legislation concerning, 103,
Unionists, in Opposition during this penoa, 90, 495-7; in industry, 248-50, 487-9;
suffrage, 487, 511-27; emancipation of,
passim
United Irish League, 62 490-512, 518; marriage reform, 490-4;
and Officers married women s property, 494-6; status
Universities, proletariat, 86-90;
and civil servants, of married women, 494-8; prostitution,
Training Corps at, 185;
498-500; women as teachers, 500-3;
at
2645 ; admission of women to, 5013
universities, 501-3; in medicine, 502-3;
University of Wales, 442; university ques- i*1
as clergy, 504; in the Law, 503-5 i
tion in Ireland, 529-30
business, 505; in Local Government, 512,
519; the modern woman*, 506-10;
National Union of Women s Suffrage
Societies, 515-16, 519, 525; Women s
Volunteers, Irish, 563-6
Social and Political Union, 516, 519, 520,
Volunteers, Ulster, $5 2
525-6; Women s Freedom League, 525;
515-16, 519-25; suffragettes,
W suffragists,
516, 519-21, 525-7; Women
s Industrial
Wallace, Sir Donald Mackenzie, 128, 139 Council, 248-9

Walton, Sir John, 95-6
Workers Educational Association, 88-90
War Office, 165-8, 172-4, 431 Workmen s Compensation Act, 99-102
Watson, Seton, 651
Wealth, distribution of, 275-8
Webb, Sydney and Beatrice (later Lord and
Lady Passfield), 95, 155, 246, 251, 253,
254-5, 265-7 Zaghlul Pasha, 39
Reprinted fey Lithography in Great

Britain byjarrold & Sons Ltd, Norwich
00<
3m *>
1 02 246

The Rule of Democracy (1905-1914)

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Description:

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

The Rule of Democracy (1905-1914)

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

942.

082 Hl6r 68-10165

942.082 Hl6r 68-10165

THE RULE OF DEMOCRACY

The final volume of Haldvy s great history covers the turbulent

proceeding thence to an analysis of the constitutional crisis that

V. IMPERIALISM AND THE RISE OF LABOUR (1895-1905)

BARNES & NOBLE INC.

Ernest Benn Limited 1961

Epilogue VoL H. The first edition was published as a single

PITY (MO.) PUBLIC LIBRARY

MAY 151968 681O1G5

new volume of my history, or, to speak more accur

reality both parties, stripped of their historic significance, were

the increase in the German navy exerted upon the nation. We

My thanks are due to Mr. Graham Wallas, Brigadier-General Sir

marriage, and naval history.

PROBLEMS OF LIBERAL POLICY

I IMPERIAL AND DOMESTIC PROBLEMS 3

Tariff and Imperial Questions; Domestic Questions: Ireland,

II FOREIGN POLICY: THE ARMY AND NAVY 121

FOUR, YEARS OF CRISIS

I WINSTON CHURCHILL AND LLOYD

II THE CONSTITUTIONAL CRISIS AND THE

FOUR YJEARS OF CRISIS

III FROM THE BOSNIAN CRISIS TO THE CRISIS

ON THE BRINK OF THE CATASTROPHE

I DOMESTIC ANARCHY 441

II INTERNATIONAL ANARCHY 567

PROBLEMS OF LIBERAL POLICY

Imperial and Domestic Problems

on December 4, 1905, Balfour tendered to King

representative Irish authority , that to say, he advocated Home

Rule, not mere devolution. It is true he advised the Irish to con

language which betrayed their embarrassment, that they saw no

the parliamentary union between Great Britain and Ireland had

years had lavished his energies and eloquence upon a series of

acceptance of the principle of Home Rule did not involve any

Bryce, the eminent historian, who had entertained hopes of the

Secretaryship itself was given to a peer, Lord Elgin). Augustine

mittee, could claim to be a Socialist of long standing and was of

pleasure of giving the Government a slap in the face, because they

They lasted a fortnight, and the order in which

against 127 Unionists, now 124 Liberals as against 43

position here to mitigate the disaster which had befallen them in

garded 1906 as the year one of a new era, an era of Liberalism re

The programme on which the new majority had been returned

obviously retained the sympathy, secret or avowed, of the London

papers published two letters exchanged between the official

more equal terms of competition for British trade, and closer

position of a general tariff of a moderate character upon manu

not be imposed for the purpose of raising prices or giving artifi

of opinion as to these methods to divide the party But these re

the official programme of the party on the morrow of the debacle

at the polls, he had surrendered to Chamberlain. In any case,

was in this sense that Chamberlain interpreted Balfour s letter,

which, he said, he cordially welcomed*. The following day,

determination to resist any proposal whether by way of taxation

Chamberlain s entire programme or reject it categorically, evaded

of this foolery. It might have answered very well in

cent. This double increase was not wholly an increase in the

throughout the entire world the price of cereals had fallen.

The complaints of the tariff reformers found no echo in the